Millais, Sir John Everett 1829-96
English painter

Born in Southampton, he became the youngest ever student at the Royal Academy in 1840, and in 1846 exhibited his Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru. Along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt he was a founder-member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was markedly influenced by them and by John Ruskin. His first Pre-Raphaelite picture, the banquet scene from Isabella by Keats, figured in the Academy in 1849, where it was followed in 1850 by Christ in the House of His Parents, which met the full force of the anti-Pre-Raphaelite reaction. The exquisite Gambler's Wife (1869) and The Boyhood of Raleigh (1870) mark the transition of his art into its final phase, displaying brilliant and effective colouring, effortless power of brushwork and delicacy of flesh-painting. The interest and value of his later works, largely portraits, lie mainly in their splendid technical qualities. A late painting, Bubbles (1886), achieved huge popularity. Millais executed a few etchings, and his illustrations in Good Words, Once a Week, The Cornhill, etc (1857-64) place him in the first rank of woodcut designers. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, London.

Bibliography: Sir John Everett Millais (1979)