Millais, Sir John Everett (mĭlā`), 1829–96, English painter. A prodigy, he began studying at the Royal Academy at the age of 11. In 1848, together with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he initiated the Pre-Raphaelite Pre-Raphaelites (prē'-răf`ēəlīts')
..... Click the link for more information. movement. His early work shows a painstaking rendering of minute detail and great clarity. His Christ in the Carpenter's Shop (1850; Tate Gall., London) was attacked because of its realism, but his reputation was soon established. He was created a baronet in 1885, and in 1896 he became president of the Royal Academy. John Ruskin was a close friend and champion of his work until 1855 when Millais married Mrs. Ruskin, after the nullification of her marriage. His work is well represented in many British galleries. His Portia is in the Metropolitan Museum.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. G. Millais (1899), M. H. Spielmann (1899), A. L. Baldry (1902), and A. Fisk (1923).

Millais, Sir John Everett

The Blind Girl, oil painting by Sir John Everett Millais, 1856; in the …

(credit: Courtesy of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery)

(born June 8, 1829, Southampton, Hampshire, Eng.—died Aug. 13, 1896, London) British painter and illustrator. In 1848 he became a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelites, a group founded in opposition to contemporary academic painting. His period of greatest achievement came in the 1850s, with The Return of the Dove to the Ark (1851) and one of his greatest public successes, The Blind Girl (1856), a tour de force of Victorian sentiment and technical facility. He was popular as a portraitist and also as a book illustrator, notably for the novels of Anthony Trollope.