Millais, SIR JOHN EVERETT, P.R.A., painter, was born at Southampton, 8th June 1829, the descendant of an ancient Jersey family. In the winter of 1838-39 Millais began to attend the drawing academy of Henry Sass, passing, two years later, into the schools of the Royal Academy. At the age of seventeen he exhibited at the Royal Academy his 'Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru,' ranked by competent critics of the day as on a level with the best historical subjects then shown. Till now his work had been upon the lines of art generally current in England at the time; but there followed a phase of revolt from accepted standards, a period of search for new paths. He became associated with the knot of young artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of whom the other chiefs were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt; and undoubtedly he was markedly influenced by the powerful personalities of both of these men, and by Mr Ruskin their literary ally. From them, in particular, his art received an impetus towards imagination and symbolism, which—as has been proved by the curious absence of such qualities from his later and more independent productions—were to a great extent foreign to his native genius. His marvellous technical skill enabled him to embody in visible artistic form conceptions that were essentially those of others with far greater adequacy than their own less trained hands could possibly have done. His first Pre-Raphaelite picture, a scene from the Isabella of Keats, strongly recalling the manner of the early Flemish and Italian masters, figured in the Academy in 1849, where it was followed in 1850 by the striking 'Christ in the House of his Parents,' known as 'The Carpenter's Shop,' in 1851 by 'The Woodman's Daughter,' in 1852 by 'The Huguenot' and 'Ophelia,' and in 1853 by 'The Order of Release' and 'The Proscribed Royalist.'
In 1856 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and soon afterwards he exhibited three of the richest and most poetic of the productions of his Pre-Raphaelite period—the 'Autumn Leaves' in 1856, the 'Sir Isumbra at the Ford' in 1857, and 'The Vale of Rest' in 1859. In the finer of the works which followed, such as 'Charlie is my Darling' (1864)—the year in which the painter received full academic honours—'The Minuet' (1866), and 'Rosalind and Celia' (1868), the precision and clear definition of Pre-Raphaelite methods still survive; but in the exquisite 'Gambler's Wife' (1869) there became visible a larger and freer method of handling, which is yet more fully established in 'The Boyhood of Raleigh' (1870), a picture which, retaining a measure of the imaginative charm of his earlier subjects, marks the transition of his art into its final and, technically, most masterly phase, displaying all the brilliant and effective colouring, the effortless power of brush-work, and the delicacy of flesh-painting. The interest and value of his later works lay mainly in their splendid technical qualities. In great part they are actual or fancy portraits, varied by a few important landscapes, of which in many ways the finest is 'Chill October' (1871), and by such an occasional figure-piece as 'The North-west Passage' (1873) and 'Effie Deans' (1877). Millais executed a few etchings, and his innumerable illustrations, dating from about 1857 to 1864, and most of them published in Good Words, Once a Week, and the Cornhill Magazine, placed him in the first rank of woodcut designers. He was D.C.L. of Oxford; in 1885 he was created a Baronet; he was elected P.R.A. in February 1896, and died 13th August of the same year. A collection of nearly twenty of his works was brought together by the Fine Arts Society, London, in 1881, and 159 examples of his art formed the Grosvenor Gallery Winter Exhibition in 1886.
See Armstrong's Life and Work of Millais (1885); Sir W. Richmond, Leighton, Millais, and William Morris (1898); M. H. Spielmann, Millais and his Work (1898); and Life and Letters, by his son (1899).