ART.
SIR JOHN MILLAIS.
BY the death of Sir John Millais England has lost not only a great painter, but one whose artistic development presents exceptional points of interest. The three clearly marked periods into which this painter's career were divided formed one of the striking features of the exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery some years ago, when a large collection of Sir John Millais's works was exhibited. We have been told that a friend, meeting the painter at this exhibition, asked if he had drawn any general conclusions from the unique experience of seeing his life's work spread out before him. The artist replied that he considered that as a young man he was a very good painter, and that be was so now, but that there inter. vened a period not equal to the former and later ones. That. this was a true estimate none can doubt. Under the impulse of the Preraphaelite movement the painter produced a series of works remarkable for force, beautiful realism, and originality. At this time he gave all possible attention to detail, and his extraordinary power of representation enabled him to produce such work as the thickly overgrown river bank which forms the background of the Ophelia. Nowhere has the intimate beauty of the tangled growth of water-plants, wild roses, and willows, seen close at hand, been rendered with more convincing power. It is obvious that the painter has revelled in this maze of beauty; and powerful as is the figure of Ophelia floating down the stream, it is impossible not to feel that the setting really interested the painter more than the tragedy. This fact is the key to the art of Sir John Millais. He was endowed with a keen sense of the beauty of natural objects, and he had enormous powers of representing the things that came before his eyes. But his mind was not subjectively poetical. He could not turn the materials of the visible world into signs to convey a poetic intention. Rather he seized upon the beauty he found before him, and put it with passion and force upon the canvas. No doubt at first the effect of contact with such minds as those of Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and liadox Brown was to make Millais, by the choice of subjects of a poetical nature, appear to belong to the same type of mind as theirs. But in truth his pictures were the expression of what he saw, theirs the expression of what they thought. Most painters lean to one side or the other. Velasquez and Veronese find their poetry objectively, Lionardo and Tintoretto subjectively. Titian is among the few who stand between and draw inspiration from either side. One type says with Coleridge :— "I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are witL:2;" the other with Wordsworth :— " For me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,"
With the tendency to receive inspiration from without, it was to be expected that the painter would take a more realistic turn than the rest of the Preraphaelite brethren. Gradually his subjects became more and more founded on modern life, and dramatic sentiment took the place of idealism. It was this middle period that the painter himself, in the story given above, considered inferior to his former and later styles. To this period belong the Black Brunswicker and Hearts are Trumps. In these pictures the sentiment is commonplace, and though painted with great ability they never roused the painter to use his incomparable power of technique—the eloquence of painting—as he before used it in the Ophelia and Vale of Best, and was destined to use it again in his later works, such as the portrait of Mr. Gladstone at Oxford, and that of Mr. Hook, the Academician.
It has been pointed out that in the case of the Ophelia what really inspired the artist was the setting, not the tragedy. The scene by the stream, with all its beauty, was what roused the painter. Again, in the later period of portraiture, the period which gave to the world so many works which were alike striking records of individuals and splendid works of art, this was the case. Take, for instance, the portrait of Carlyle, and compare it with the one by Mr. Whistler. In the latter case we feel that the painter has analysed the mind of the sitter, and selected for illustration a phase of it; planned the colour, the light and shade, and the pose, so that the meaning may be clear. Throughout the whole picture there is a vein of tenderness ; insensibly we are reminded of such a passage as, "Two men I honour and no third." The painter's mind has for the time felt the influence of Carlyle, and by the magic of his painting he has made the physical aspect of the philosopher suggest this to those who look at the picture. An entirely different aspect of Carlyle is given us by Sir John Millais ; he gives us the Carlyle who sat down in his studio to be painted. With masterly power the aspect of the bitter old sage has been seized and per- petuated. What we have is the man as he appeared before the painter while in the act of painting, not an aspect of the writer's mind made manifest by his outward form. It is with no wish to disparage Sir John Millais's art that this com- parison has been made. Both views are wanted to enable us to understand Carlyle. Each painter has used his own method, and each with consummate power.
Sir John Millais painted many portraits of children with fancy titles. These pictures were among the painter's most popular works. But it must be doubted if they were really equal to his portraits of grown men and women. The self- consciousness of the costume model spoils too many of them. To realise this, compare Cherry Ripe with Le Petit Tambour of Reynolds. Latterly, Sir John Millais's subject-pictures had partaken a good deal of the nature of portraits, and were successful in proportion to the appropriateness in each particular instance of such a proceeding.
To sum up in words the art of a poet is easier than to do the same with a painter. The latter works largely by a means of expression which has no equivalent in words. Describe the idea, the composition, the drawing, and even the colour of a picture, and yet there remains something undescribed and undescribable. All the qualities of a picture just named are dead and lifeless without that apparently mere physical act of laying the paint on the surface of the canvas. Yet, in truth, this act is the painter's language. Upon the perfection of this handiwork depends the painter's power of making his emotion spring up in the minds of others. That the artist whose works we have been con- sidering had this power none will deny. That he had it in a measure attained by few of his contemporaries most will agree. To this power was added a colour sense both vigorous and daring, as well as great mastery over form. Probably it is as a portrait-painter that Sir John Millais's fame will be most enduring. His landscapes were no exception to his figure-pic- tures; the same power of representing what he saw is also to be found in them. But the greatest landscape art demands a more subjective turn of mind than this painter was endowed with. But although his works in this direction do not reach the highest rank, still the sympathetic realism of such pictures as Chill Ortober make them valuable additions to the art of the nation. As was to be expected in the case of a man whose artistic development had covered such a wide field from Preraphaelitism to Impressionism, Sir John Millais had large sympathy with the new developments of the art of younger men, while to students his unfailing kindaess made him deeply loved by those who had come into personal contact with him. And when the history of the art of this generation comes to be written there can be no doubt that an eminent place will be occupied by this kind-hearted man and
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