JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS

JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS
JASON ROSENFELD Book Number: 75798 Product format: Hardback

Since his death in 1896, Sir John Everett Millais's career has often been seen as divided between the promise of his Pre-Raphaelite early masterpieces and the supposed acquiescence to commercial impulses and traditionalist art forms in his later career. How could the fiercely committed and radical painter who made The Woodman's Daughter (figure 1 in the book) in 1850-51 be the same man who painted seemingly effortless society portraits such as Twins (figure 2) illustrated here, 25 years later? He was not only a founding father of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but also commercially successful. His precocious early success is epitomised by such well known paintings as Isabella (1849), Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) and Ophelia (1851-2). His later works have been unjustly neglected and superficially judged yet in his day they led the Aesthetic Movement, and their bravura manner and looser symbolic associations influenced the likes of John Singer Sargent and Vincent Van Gogh. Millais's realism innovated landscape painting and his portraiture established a new ideal of feminine beauty and modern representation of politicians and other key figures of the day. This is the very first monograph to appraise the artist's complete career, in Rosenfeld's words it is a 'consistently relevant and inventive Millais' that emerges in this book. Colour photographs, 256pp, index and hundred and hundreds of examples right up to the Pear's Soap advertising and the rather dismal but beautiful Winter Fuel of 1873. Magnificent colour reproductions on nearly every page. Elegant hardback, 10" x 12" approx.
Published price: £39.95
Bibliophile price: £27.00
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