My First Sermon

My First Sermon
Artist	John Everett Millais
Year	1863
Type	Oil on canvas, genre painting
Dimensions	97 cm× 77 cm(38 in× 30 in)
Location	Guildhall Art Gallery, London

My First Sermon is an 1863 oil painting by the British artist John Everett Millais. A fancy picture, it depicts a young girl listening intently to a sermon in church for the first time. Millais used his own daughter Effie as the model. ^[1]

The work was displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1863 at the National Gallery where it was well received. ^[2] On the strength of the painting, along with The Eve of St Agnes , Millais was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy of Arts. ^[3] Today the picture is in the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London, having been bequeathed by the art collector Charles Gassiot in 1902.

Millais produced a sequel My Second Sermon in 1864 which Gassiot also donated to the Guildhall. ^[4]

See also

• List of paintings by John Everett Millais

References

1. Douglas-Fairhurst p.112
2. Riding p.13 & 52
3. Tanabe p.60
4. https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/my-second-sermon-51103

Bibliography

• Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland. Harvard University Press, 2015.
• Riding, Christine. John Everett Millais. Harry N. Abrams, 2006.
• Tanabe, Kumiko (ed.) The Interconnections Between Victorian Writers, Artists and Places. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.