Millais: Portraits Book

John Everett Millais is still thought of mostly as a Pre-Raphaelite painter; but a much longer portion of his career was devoted to painting the portraits of the Victorian rich and famous. Not only did this prove extraordinarily lucrative--Millais earned what was by today's standards millions from his portraits--but it gave one of the most talented of all 19th-century painters the chance to fashion powerful and memorable images of the people of the age. This book is the catalogue to the 1999 Millais Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, but it is a much more handsome production than most catalogues; the pictures are beautifully reproduced, and, in place of the usual bland catalogue commentary, essays from four leading art historians have been gathered together: on Millais' Early and Pre-Raphaelite portraits, his portraits of children, of men and of women (this last a fascinating piece by Kate Flint). Altogether these provide an absorbing historical and critical context for these pictures. For my money it is the contrast between a Millais portrait of an old lady in black (Isabella Heugh, 1872) and the more famous portrait by James Whistler of his mother from 1871 (called Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1) that reveals precisely why Millais was so talented a portraitist; Isabella Heugh is not only full of character, it is dynamic and involving in terms of its potent colour scheme and diagonal composition in a way that makes Whistler's famous image seem flat and denuded.--Adam RobertsRead More