Page 53 - Studio International - February 1967

Millais:
The middle line in

Pre-Raphaelitism

As there isn't much doubt that the later Millais
pictures are all pretty dreadful, and that the earlier
ones are good, questions arise: Why and how and
when did he stop being good? The favourite quick
answer is that he 'fell' in some way. Ruskin was the
first with the news, announcing in 1857 that Sir
Isumbras at the Ford represented 'Not merely fall
—catastrophe'. Ruskin thought that the change of
manner would lead to Millais' ruin, but of course
it didn't, at least not in a monetary sense. He got
a great deal of money (eventually £30,000 a year)
and had, one hopes, an enjoyable time spending it
with that vain, shrewish, sexy, and expensive wife
of his. The cash question seems to have been one of
Above
the things that Sickert really objected to: and his
A hitherto-unpublished
essay on the artist founds the smug and romantic sheet of drawings by Millais
twentieth-century notion that the man had sold caricaturing the Post-
out. Whether he did or not (and leaving aside the Raphael ite tradition
perfectly relevant question of Why shouldn't he?),
Left
what are those Pre-Raphaelite pictures actually
Lorenzo and Isabella 1849
like? And when did they stop being Pre-Raphaelite ? Oil on canvas
Pre-Raphaelitism obviously doesn't stand up as a 40 x 57 in.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
communal ism because the members were all so
different. But Collinson perhaps gives a clue to
Millais' character as the central figure when he
said (on resigning) that he had tried to paint
`conscientiously'. It's that particular mixture of
conscientiousness and fervour that gives the flavour
to a lot of Pre-Raphaelite anecdotes, ideas, and
pictures. Millais had the combination right. Of the
other painters Rossetti had too much fervour and
not enough conscientiousness, which explains his
feckless and wavering talent in those early years.
Holman Hunt had altogether too much conscien-
tiousness—it led him to that preposterous practical opposed to Academy methods of composition, and likely to miss this because of being so familiar with
joke of a painting, The Scapegoat. But Millais takes, his early paintings show a fresh sense of form that is the story. That no critic of the time seems to have
as so often, a middle line. And for a time he quite remarkable. Take Lorenzo and Isabella; the carped at the inelegance of her situation is less
certainly represented their real objections to the overwhelming precedents for the composition are surprising if we consider Millais' sleight-of-hand at
Post-Raphaelite tradition. The sheet of drawings obvious, as thirteen people round a table equals a concealing the oddness of the posture behind the
shows this. On the left, a simpering Raphaelesque Last Supper. So much the greater, then, Millais' illustration of Shakespeare's most familiar play. At
Virgin, complete with a monstrous child; top success in producing such an original, such a any rate, Ophelia explodes all the previous tradi-
right, a typically overwrought Baroque saint—that poignantly gawky grouping. Quite apart from the tions of Shakespeare illustration. So too does
worst type of excitable foreigner; bottom left, hair-splitting technical things he does, it's this Ferdinand and Ariel, with Ferdinand doing that
some of those Low-Country boors at their asinine type of awkward gracelessness, this lack of poise, funny kind of stoop. (Incidentally, Arid comes
junketings. These, of course, are precisely the kinds that makes the early pictures so distinctive. very well out of a convenient art-historical rule-of-
of painting that Ruskin hated so much, and which Naturally, Ophelia lacks poise more than most. thumb test for determining the competence of
he so effectively slaughtered in the first two Quite apart from the beautifully manic precision figure painters: how convincingly they can attach
volumes of Modern Painters. But here the spirit of detail, its sharpish poetry of actuality, the extra- wings to the human body—compare, e.g., Claude
of caricature is kindly, not with Ruskin's righteous ordinary thing about this picture is the totally and Poussin angels.)
viciousness. All the same, Millais was definitely grotesque pose the poor girl is in. Perhaps one is Anyway, as far as composition goes, Millais is a