The painting depicts a Brunswicker about to depart for battle. His sweetheart, wearing a ballgown, restrains him, trying to push the door closed, while he pulls it open. This suggests that the scene is inspired by the Duchess of Richmond's ball on 15 June 1815, from which the officers departed to join troops at the Battle of Quatre Bras.[4] The woman's dog, wearing a red ribbon like its mistress, looks on attentively.
In a letter to his wife, Effie Gray, Millais described his inspiration for the work, referring to a conversation with William Howard Russell, the war correspondent of The Times:
My subject appears to me, too, most fortunate, and Russell thinks it first-rate. It is connected with the Brunswick Cavalry at Waterloo...They were nearly annihilated but performed prodigies of valour... I have it all in my mind's eye and feel confident that it will be a prodigious success. The costume and incident are so powerful that I am astonished it has never been touched upon before. Russell was quite struck with it, and he is the best man for knowing the public taste. Nothing could be kinder than his interest, and he is to set about getting all the information that is required.[4]
The same letter states that he intends it to be "a perfect pendant to The Huguenot", Millais's first major success, which portrays a similar scene featuring two lovers gazing at each other longingly.[1] Originally Millais intended the two paintings to be even more similar than they are by repeating the motif of the armband used in the earlier painting. He wanted the soldier to be wearing a black crepe mourning armband, with "the sweetheart of the young soldier sewing it around his arm".[4] The armband idea was quickly dropped as it does not appear in any extant preparatory drawings.[citation needed]
Millais reduced the presence of Napoleon to an engraving after Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps, which is framed on the damask-hung wall, and which "perplexed the critics with the possible intricacies of cross purposes and rival jealousies" according to the reviewer from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.[3] This refers to the fact that some critics took the print to imply that the female character was an admirer of Napoleon, and so she was trying to prevent her lover from joining the army for both personal and political reasons. As the critic of The Times surmised, "her reluctance is due in part to a romantic admiration for this great conquerer[sic?]."[4] Other critics suggest the print was intended to allude to both the Waterloo campaign and to more recent events, particularly Napoleon III's repetition of his predecessor's crossing of the Alps by his attack on Austrian-controlled Lombardy in 1859.[4][5]
Creation and reception
The artwork took an estimated three months to paint.[6] Millais is reported to have paid particularly close attention to the correctness of the Brunswicker's uniform.[7]Kate Perugini, the daughter of Charles Dickens, was used as a model for the woman seen in the picture.[2] The male model was an anonymous soldier who died shortly afterwards. The two models never actually met. Millais' son says that they both posed with wooden props. He "clasped a lay-figure to his breast, while the fair lady leant on the bosom of a man of wood."[8]
It was also bought for the highest price Millais had ever received from dealer and publisher Ernest Gambart—100 guineas (£105).[2] He sold it on to the well-known Pre-Raphaelite collector Thomas Plint.[9] Later, in 1898, William Hesketh Lever purchased the work for his private collection.[2]
The painting followed a period of relative lack of success for Millais, and its similarity to A Huguenot is widely interpreted as an attempt to repeat his earlier success. It was engraved in mezzotint by T.L. Atkinson in 1864.[8] Millais also painted two watercolour copies of the composition.[4]
1 2 3 4 5 6 Mary Bennett, Artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Circle: The First Generation, Catalogue of Works at the Walker Art Gallery, Lady Lever Gallery and Sudley Art Gallery, National Museums and Galleries, Merseyside, Lund Humphries, pp.144–149.
Euphemia Chalmers Millais, Lady Millais was a Scottish artists' model and writer who was married to Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. She had previously married the art critic John Ruskin, but she left him with the marriage never having been consummated; it was subsequently annulled. This famous Victorian "love triangle" has been dramatised in plays, films, and an opera.
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
John William Waterhouse was an English painter known for working first in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. His paintings are known for their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend. A high proportion depict a single young and beautiful woman in a historical costume and setting, though there are some ventures into Orientalist painting and genre painting, still mostly featuring women.
The Lady Lever Art Gallery is a museum founded and built by the industrialist and philanthropist William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme and opened in 1922. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is set in the garden village of Port Sunlight, on the Wirral and one of the National Museums Liverpool.
Charles Allston Collins was a British painter, writer, and illustrator associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The Shadow of Death is a religious painting by the English painter William Holman Hunt, on which he worked from 1870 to 1873, during his second trip to the Holy Land. It depicts Jesus as a young man prior to his ministry, working as a carpenter. He is shown stretching his arms after sawing wood. The shadow of his outstretched arms falls on a wooden spar on which carpentry tools hang, creating a "shadow of death" prefiguring the crucifixion. The arch of the window also creates a natural halo around the head of Christ. His mother Mary is depicted from behind, gazing up at the shadow, having been looking into a box in which she has kept the gifts given by the Magi.
Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting the Holy Family in Saint Joseph's carpentry workshop. The painting was extremely controversial when first exhibited, prompting many negative reviews, most notably one written by Charles Dickens. It catapulted the previously obscure Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to notoriety and was a major contributor to the debate about Realism in the arts. It is now in Tate Britain in London.
Bubbles, originally titled A Child's World, is an 1886 painting by Sir John Everett Millais that became famous when it was used over many generations in advertisements for Pears soap. During Millais's lifetime, it led to widespread debate about the relationship between art and advertising.
Isabella (1848–1849) is a painting by John Everett Millais, which was his first exhibited work in the Pre-Raphaelite style, completed shortly after the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, and is now in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.
The Scapegoat (1854–1856) is a painting by William Holman Hunt which depicts the "scapegoat" described in the Book of Leviticus. On the Day of Atonement, a goat would have its horns wrapped with a red cloth – representing the sins of the community – and be driven off.
A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge (1851–52) is the full, exhibited title of a painting by John Everett Millais, and was produced at the height of his Pre-Raphaelite period. It was accompanied, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1852, with a long quote reading: "When the clock of the Palais de Justice shall sound upon the great bell, at daybreak, then each good Catholic must bind a strip of white linen round his arm, and place a fair white cross in his cap.—The order of the Duke of Guise." This long title is usually abbreviated to A Huguenot or A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew's Day.
The Brunswick Ducal Field-Corps, commonly known as the Black Brunswickers, was a volunteer military unit raised by Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel during the Napoleonic Wars. The Duke was a strong opponent of Napoleon's occupation of German territory. Formed in 1809 when war broke out between the First French Empire and the Austrian Empire, the unit initially consisted of approximately 2,300 infantrymen and cavalrymen before incorporating a number of artillery troops.
Mariana is an 1851 oil-on-panel painting by John Everett Millais. The image depicts the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, as retold in Tennyson's 1830 poem "Mariana". The painting is regarded as an example of Millais's "precision, attention to detail, and stellar ability as a colorist". It has been held by Tate Britain since 1999.
Catherine Elizabeth Macready Perugini was an English painter of the Victorian era and the daughter of Catherine Dickens and Charles Dickens.
Desperate Romantics is a six-part television drama serial about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, first broadcast on BBC Two between 21 July and 25 August 2009.
John Ruskin is a portrait of the leading Victorian art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900). It was painted by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais (1829–1896) during 1853–54. John Ruskin was an early advocate of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists and part of their success was due to his efforts.
Fanny Eaton was a Jamaican-born artist's model and domestic worker. She is best known as a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle in England between 1859 and 1867. Her public debut was in Simeon Solomon's painting The Mother of Moses, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860. She was also featured in works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Joanna Mary Boyce, Rebecca Solomon, and others.
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