The Order of Release, 1746 | |
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Artist | John Everett Millais |
Year | 1852–1853 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 102.9 cm× 73.7 cm(40.5 in× 29.0 in) |
Location | Tate Britain, London |
The Order of Release, 1746 is a painting by John Everett Millais exhibited in 1853. It is notable for marking the beginnings of Millais's move away from the highly medievalist Pre-Raphaelitism of his early years. Effie Gray, who later left her husband John Ruskin for Millais, modelled for the female figure.
The painting depicts the wife of a Highland Jacobite soldier, who has been imprisoned after the Jacobite rising of 1745, with an order securing his release. She holds her child, showing the order to a guard, while her husband embraces her.
The Illustrated London News reviewed the painting as follows:
The dark, generalised background is a departure from the highly detailed backgrounds of earlier works such as Ophelia , as is the emphatic chiaroscuro. However, the portrayal of tense relationships disrupted by historical dramas was a continuation of the theme of A Huguenot and The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 .
While working on the painting, Millais began to develop a friendship with Effie, the wife of his principal supporter, the critic John Ruskin. A study for the painting has a drawing of her head on one side and an image of a man kneeling in supplication to a woman on the other, labelled "accepted."
The title of the painting was adopted for the 1947 book The Order of Release by William Milbourne James about the love triangle, and also of a radio play about it broadcast in 1998. [2] The painting of the picture is dramatised onstage in the play Mrs Ruskin (2003) by Kim Morrissey, [3] and in the TV series Desperate Romantics (2009).
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Euphemia Chalmers Millais, Lady Millais was a Scottish artists' model and the wife of Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. She had previously been married to 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" modelled in part 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.
Ophelia is an 1851–52 painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais in the collection of Tate Britain, London. It depicts Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river.
A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857) is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting a medieval knight helping two young peasant children over a swollen river. The children are carrying heavy burdens of wood for winter fuel. Though the title refers to the medieval poem Sir Isumbras, the painting does not illustrate a scene from the original text. However Millais's friend, the writer Tom Taylor, wrote verse in a pastiche of the original poem, describing the event depicted. This was included in the original exhibition catalogue.
Autumn Leaves (1856) is a painting by John Everett Millais exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856. It was described by the critic John Ruskin as "the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight." Millais's wife Effie wrote that he had intended to create a picture that was "full of beauty and without a subject".
Peace Concluded, 1856 (1856) is a painting by John Everett Millais which depicts a wounded British officer reading The Times newspaper's report of the end of the Crimean War. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856 to mixed reviews, but was strongly endorsed by the critic John Ruskin who proclaimed that in the future it would be recognised as "among the world's best masterpieces". The central figure in the painting is a portrait of Millais's wife Effie Gray, who had previously been married to Ruskin. It is now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Admiral Sir William Milbourne James, was a British naval commander, politician and author. He served in the Royal Navy from the early 20th century to the Second World War. During the First World War, he was an integral part of the Naval Intelligence Division in its early years.
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.
Pauline, Lady Trevelyan was an English painter, noted for single-handedly making Wallington Hall in Northumberland a centre of High Victorian cultural life, and for enchanting by her intellect and art John Ruskin, Swinburne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Thomas Carlyle, John Everett Millais, and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She was married in May 1835 to Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, 6th Baronet.
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.
Dante's Inferno: The Private Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poet and Painter (1967) is a feature-length 35 mm film directed by Ken Russell and first screened on the BBC on 22 December 1967 as part of Omnibus. It quickly became a staple in cinemas in retrospectives of Russell's work. Using nonlinear narrative technique, it tells of the relationship between the 19th-century artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his model, Elizabeth Siddal.
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.
Sophia Margaret "Sophie" Gray, later Sophia Margaret Caird, was a Scottish model for her brother-in-law, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. She was a younger sister of Euphemia "Effie" Gray, who married Millais in 1855 after the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin. The spelling of her name was, after around 1861, sometimes "Sophy," but only within the family. In public she was known as Sophie and later in life, after her marriage, as Sophia.
Effie Gray is a 2014 British biographical film written by Emma Thompson and directed by Richard Laxton, starring Dakota Fanning, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, David Suchet, Derek Jacobi, James Fox, Robbie Coltrane, Claudia Cardinale, Greg Wise, and Tom Sturridge. It is based on the true story of John Ruskin's marriage to Euphemia Gray and the subsequent annulment of their marriage.
Events from the year 1853 in Scotland.
The Countess is a play written by the American playwright and novelist Gregory Murphy. It recounts the break-up of the marriage of John Ruskin and Effie Gray, one of the greatest scandals of the Victorian era in Britain.
Suzanne Fagence Cooper is a British non-fiction writer who has written extensively on the Pre-Raphaelites and Victorian women.