VII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2015

The target of my paper is to tell you about the painting of John Everett Millais, one of the founders of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

His painting is of outstanding technique among artists of his time. I was impressed by his work “Ophelia” that is why I want to tell you about his painting.

My paper is accompanied by power point presentation which consist of twenty five slides, one test of a set on the theme and a reference list.

This paper was listened to and approved during the April reading student conference on April 11^th, 2014 at Vladimir State University.

Before we speak about our main theme I tell few words about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their aim was to refuse mechanistic approach in painting that 19^th century was a part of standards of Royal Academy Schools. This approach was adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. The Pre-Raphaelite where inspirit by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. Also they where influenced by Romanticism and stand for right of artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction.

John Everett Millais was born 8 June 1829 in Southampton, England, since childhood he had a great talent for painting and at the age of eleven Millais became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. No one before him do this at such early age. In time of studying in Academy Millais met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti with whom he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. That was in September 1848.

His first Pre-Raphaelite works, for example Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) and A Huguenot (1852), were concentrating on the beauty and complexity of the natural world. But especially this approach we can see in Ophelia (1852). There is dense and elaborate pictorial surfaces based on the integration of naturalistic elements.

Critic John Ruskin had defended the Pre-Raphaelites against their critics. Millais's friendship with Ruskin introduced him to Ruskin's wife Effie and soon after this she modelled for his painting The Order of Release (1853). As Millais painted Effie they fell in love. Soon in 1855 Effie annulled her marriage to Ruskin. Effie and John Millais married. He and Effie had eight children.

After his marriage, Millais’s style in painting became broader. Ruskin met this changes very negatively. It has been argued that this changes resulted from Millais’s aim to get more money to support his growing family. Millais himself argued that could paint with greater boldness. He wrote an article "Thoughts on our art of Today" (1888) in which he recommended Velázquez and Rembrandt as models for artists to follow. In this period Millais had connections with Whistler and Albert Moore. Paintings such as The Eve of St. Agnes and The Somnambulist (both 1863) clearly show this fact. Later works, from the 1870s onwards demonstrate Millais's reverence for Old Masters such as Joshua Reynolds and Velázquez.

Also there is many landscape paintings among Millais’s works. The first of these, Chill October (1870) was painted in Perth, near his wife's family home. Usually his landscapes were autumnal or early winter in season and evoke a mood of melancholy and sense of transience, especially such works as Autumn Leaves (1856) and The Vale of Rest (1858) .

When Millais died in 1896. His statue was installed at the front of the National Gallery of British Art (now Tate Britain) in the garden in 1905.

References

Barlow, Paul Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais, Ashgate 2005.

Birchall, Heather. "Sir Thomas Brock 1847–1922", Tate online, February 2002. Retrieved 5 April 2008.

Daly, G (1989). Pre-Raphaelites in love. New York: Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 0-89919-450-8. OCLC: 18463706

Eggeling, Dr Joe. Millais and Dunkeld The story of Millais's Landscapes (1985).