Page 55 - Studio International - February 1967

great liberator, though he's not always so daring. regard this change as being a sign of weakness, a
The Tate's preliminary drawing for Christ in the
House of his Parents has a strangely steepened per- but it seems a bit unfair to do so, as the painting
spective at the left, which is certainly (a) consci- had such a rough time anyway. Rather one ought
ously done and (b) very peculiar (though to to be glad for the beauty of minuterie in the
consider it, as does Schultz's book, as a kind of
proto-Art Nouveau is surely a very dubious and cloth; and appreciate how psychologically
historiographical ploy). And the attitudes of some
of the characters are angular and twisted to the
point of disjointment. The exhibited oil, however,
cuts all this out, and we have what amounts to a
traditional English Conversation Piece, and the to look at, indicate that slightly acid honesty
best of that particular genre. If we like, we can
Right
Ophelia 1852
Oil on canvas, arched top
29+ x 44 in.
National Gallery, London
Below right
Effie clad 'in natural
ornament'—Millais made the
drawing at the prompting of
Ruskin
Above
The Blind Girl 1856
Oil on canvas
31 3/4 x 21 in.
City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham
Facing
A detail of The Blind Girl
which he later so spectacularly abandoned.
retreat, a toadying to the standards of the Academy, Sentiment starts creeping in: at first, only as a
kind of willingness to move and be moved, but it
leads on to that oily fulsomeness of emotional
response that makes one shudder with embarrass-
modelling of the flesh and in the textures of wood ment at the later works. The Blind Girl is still under
control, just. It has a hardness about it. Walking
exact the grouping of the three main figures is. up to the painting, it's the sheer brilliance of tech-
The particular text that he chose to illustrate nique that first hits one, the clarity and verve. The
(Zechariah, xiii, 6.), and of course the stubborn technique, the wonder of reproducing so exactly
resolution not to paint the family as being lovely that dully vivid sky, the pale light, the fierce
colours of the butterfly, leads naturally to the
which Millais had in his Pre-Raphaelite days, and pathos of the ostensible subject, the fact that the
girl is blind. The very power of Millais' eyesight
seems to be the measure of his sorrow for the girl.
The Blind Girl must be the last painting before
Millais went off. Both Autumn Leaves and The Vale
of Rest show this colour sense disintegrating, and
the actual application of paint to canvas has lost its
exact delicacy, its precision without niggling.
Also, of course, they're quite simply getting
soppier. A reason often advanced for the decline
is the estrangement from Ruskin. There's a lot in
this (though not all), for Ruskin did Millais con-
siderable good, and it seems that the young painter
was happy, at first, to place himself under the
guidance of the critic. Ruskin took him to Glen-
finlas with the express purpose of teaching him
how to paint rocks and water (the water in
Ophelia isn't proper water, by Modern Painters
standards). The result was the Ruskin portrait.
The rocks and the stream there are remarkably
like Ruskin's notions of the way that Turner
painted, and this is a successful and probably
unique example of two painters and a critic in
homogeneous collusion. Ruskin made Millais think
about designing a church, and got him to do a
characteristic drawing of Effie clad in 'natural
ornament'—squirrels, ears of wheat, cowrie shell
ear-rings, lizards, trailing convulvulus, and the
like. No wonder the girl looks so unhappy. Later
drawings of Effie replace that kind of accuracy and
purpose by elegance, trailing ball-dresses that fill
the page with flowing high-society tastefulness.
And high society was where she was soon to be,
once Millais had got her away from her husband.
And the pictures get worse, though all was not yet
lost. Autumn Leaves in particular has a special
cunning about it. The theme is familiar: to take a
later Victorian example, Hopkins"Margaret, are
you grieving ... ' deals with the same subject. But
the poem's almost savage last line, and the brute
fact of death in conjunction with young pretty
girls, is something that in Millais is softened and
smudged into wistfulness. The girls are as pretty
as a picture and the picture is as pretty as the
girls. Only just round the corner are all the can-
vasses in which slipshod painting interprets the
whole syndrome of Victorian highly-valued things,
the syndrome of the thwack of willow against
leather, the laughter of children at play, the eyes of
a beautiful woman lighting up with love, the
simplicity of a brave man's trust in God; things
like that. Millais went on to paint them all. The
Baronet had finished sowing his wild oats.
q
The Royal Academy exhibition of the work of Millais
is at Burlington House, London, until March 5.