John Everett Millais: 80 Drawings

Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was an English artist, one of the founders of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of eleven in 1840, where he met William Holman Hunt (1827-1910). Reacting against the traditional painting practices of such artists as Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Millais favoured a more realist approach evidenced in works. This attention to detail met with a great deal of criticism, however, and it was only with the critical support of John Ruskin (1819-1900) that public opinion began to change. Adhering to the Pre-Raphaelite creed, Millais painted the landscape backgrounds of such celebrated paintings as 'Ophelia' and 'The Blind Girl' out of doors rather than in the studio. Millais also produced illustrations for a number of literary texts. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1863. By the late 1860s, Millais had become an extremely popular artist. He was created a baronet in 1885 and elected President of the Royal Academy in 1896 a few months before his death.