WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're tackling 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:07.580 a real giant of Victorian art, Sir John Everett 00:00:07.580 --> 00:00:10.699 Millais. His life story, honestly, it reads like 00:00:10.699 --> 00:00:13.160 fiction from this like radical young painter. 00:00:13.869 --> 00:00:15.929 To a pillar of the establishment. It's quite 00:00:15.929 --> 00:00:17.730 the journey. It really is. Almost two different 00:00:17.730 --> 00:00:19.969 artists in one lifetime. You know, he starts 00:00:19.969 --> 00:00:22.210 as this key figure in the Pre -Raphaelite Brotherhood, 00:00:22.210 --> 00:00:25.010 totally anti -establishment, and ends up Sir 00:00:25.010 --> 00:00:28.010 John, a baronet, incredibly wealthy president 00:00:28.010 --> 00:00:31.629 of the Royal Academy. Exactly. So the sources 00:00:31.629 --> 00:00:34.170 we're digging into today, they trace this whole 00:00:34.170 --> 00:00:36.869 arc. How does someone go from shocking the critics 00:00:36.869 --> 00:00:39.909 to, well, setting the trends and even famously 00:00:39.909 --> 00:00:42.340 selling soap? That's the core question, and you 00:00:42.340 --> 00:00:45.079 can almost boil down that tension, that contradiction 00:00:45.079 --> 00:00:47.600 to two moments. Okay, what are they? Well, first, 00:00:47.700 --> 00:00:50.039 he's this astonishing child prodigy, gets into 00:00:50.039 --> 00:00:51.859 the Royal Academy School as the youngest student 00:00:51.859 --> 00:00:54.859 they'd ever had, 11 years old. 11, that's unbelievable. 00:00:55.079 --> 00:00:58.640 Right, pure, raw talent. Then, fast forward decades 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:01.740 later, one of his most famous paintings, Bubbles, 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:04.260 it ends up being used as an advert for pear soap. 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:06.510 The soap ad. That's probably what sticks in a 00:01:06.510 --> 00:01:08.250 lot of people's minds, isn't it? It is. And that 00:01:08.250 --> 00:01:11.590 contrasts the intense artistic purity of his 00:01:11.590 --> 00:01:15.329 youth versus the, let's say, sentimental commercialism 00:01:15.329 --> 00:01:17.370 later on. That's the fault line we're exploring. 00:01:17.810 --> 00:01:20.689 We have to understand the early shockwaves he 00:01:20.689 --> 00:01:22.989 created first, though. Okay, let's unpack that. 00:01:23.170 --> 00:01:26.010 Where does this radical talent even come from? 00:01:26.409 --> 00:01:29.909 He was born in Southampton, 1829, but his family 00:01:29.909 --> 00:01:33.030 had strong Jersey roots. Very strong. And he 00:01:33.030 --> 00:01:35.120 was... fiercely proud of it. There's that great 00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:38.060 story about William Thackeray, the author. Thackeray 00:01:38.060 --> 00:01:40.280 apparently asked him, sort of teasingly, you 00:01:40.280 --> 00:01:44.060 know, when did England conquer Jersey? Okay. 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:46.200 And Millais, apparently without missing a beat, 00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:49.219 just shoots back, never. Jersey conquered England. 00:01:49.519 --> 00:01:51.640 Huh. That tells you something about his confidence, 00:01:51.780 --> 00:01:53.900 doesn't it? Absolutely. That sort of inherent 00:01:53.900 --> 00:01:56.799 self -belief. And it wasn't just him. His mother, 00:01:56.920 --> 00:01:59.459 Emily Mary Millais, she was a huge driving force. 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:01.980 The sources describe her as having a forceful 00:02:01.980 --> 00:02:05.590 personality. Understatement, maybe. She saw his 00:02:05.590 --> 00:02:09.189 talent early on, and, well, she basically engineered 00:02:09.189 --> 00:02:11.590 his career path. She moved the whole family to 00:02:11.590 --> 00:02:14.469 London, specifically to get him connections, 00:02:14.629 --> 00:02:16.930 to get him into the Royal Academy. Wow. Millais 00:02:16.930 --> 00:02:19.030 himself said later, very simply, I owe everything 00:02:19.030 --> 00:02:21.830 to my mother. Her drive was crucial. And it worked. 00:02:21.949 --> 00:02:25.430 Getting into the RA schools at 11 in 1840, I 00:02:25.430 --> 00:02:27.349 mean, that's just unprecedented. This is the 00:02:27.349 --> 00:02:29.509 absolute heart of the establishment art world. 00:02:29.669 --> 00:02:31.409 Totally. The place you went to learn the rules, 00:02:31.569 --> 00:02:34.250 the classical stuff. But ironically, it's there, 00:02:34.389 --> 00:02:36.990 inside the academy walls, that he meets William 00:02:36.990 --> 00:02:39.909 Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The other 00:02:39.909 --> 00:02:42.569 key figures. Exactly. And these three young guys, 00:02:42.610 --> 00:02:45.330 full of ambition and, frankly, fed up with the 00:02:45.330 --> 00:02:47.629 state of British art. They're a rebellion. Pretty 00:02:47.629 --> 00:02:50.370 much. They found the Pre -Raphaelite Brotherhood, 00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:53.930 the PRB, in September 1847. And the meeting happens 00:02:53.930 --> 00:02:56.310 right there in Millais' family home on Gower 00:02:56.310 --> 00:02:58.509 Street. So what was their beef, exactly? What 00:02:58.509 --> 00:03:00.569 were they rebelling against? Pre -Raphaelite 00:03:00.569 --> 00:03:03.599 or for Raphael? Precisely. They felt that art 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:06.099 after Raphael, you know, high Renaissance and 00:03:06.099 --> 00:03:08.680 onwards had become kind of stale, artificial, 00:03:09.180 --> 00:03:12.139 overly reliant on formulas. They wanted to go 00:03:12.139 --> 00:03:14.240 back to the intensity, the detail, the sort of 00:03:14.240 --> 00:03:17.300 moral seriousness of Italian art before Raphael. 00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:20.610 So more realism. More detail. Obsessive detail. 00:03:20.710 --> 00:03:23.110 That was the hallmark. Intense observation of 00:03:23.110 --> 00:03:25.389 nature, rendering everything, every leaf, every 00:03:25.389 --> 00:03:27.629 thread, every texture with almost scientific 00:03:27.629 --> 00:03:30.110 precision. You mentioned the phrase pictorial 00:03:30.110 --> 00:03:32.490 ecosystem. Yeah, I remember reading that. That's 00:03:32.490 --> 00:03:34.789 it. Their paintings are incredibly dense. They 00:03:34.789 --> 00:03:37.270 often painted on a wet white ground to get this 00:03:37.270 --> 00:03:40.129 amazing luminosity, which was super demanding, 00:03:40.210 --> 00:03:43.169 slow work. And applying this hyper realism to 00:03:43.169 --> 00:03:45.169 religious subjects. Well, that's where the trouble 00:03:45.169 --> 00:03:46.870 started. Right. Like with Christ in the house 00:03:46.870 --> 00:03:49.490 of his parents. Right. 4950. Oh, big trouble. 00:03:49.650 --> 00:03:52.330 That painting caused an absolute uproar because 00:03:52.330 --> 00:03:55.210 instead of the usual serene, idealized holy family, 00:03:55.330 --> 00:03:57.610 he painted them like actual working people. Exactly. 00:03:57.750 --> 00:04:01.310 In a messy carpenter's workshop, realistic Burt, 00:04:01.370 --> 00:04:04.129 worn hands, the shavings on the floor. It was 00:04:04.129 --> 00:04:06.810 seen as shockingly irreverent, blasphemous even 00:04:06.810 --> 00:04:10.189 to some. And the critics went wild. I remember 00:04:10.189 --> 00:04:13.030 Dickens was particularly savage. Charles Dickens 00:04:13.030 --> 00:04:15.770 absolutely unloaded on it, wrote this scathing 00:04:15.770 --> 00:04:18.629 review anonymously at first in his magazine Household 00:04:18.629 --> 00:04:20.829 Words. What did he say? He called Malaise's Mary 00:04:20.829 --> 00:04:24.050 ugly and ghastly and described the young Christ 00:04:24.050 --> 00:04:28.430 as a hideous, wry -necked, blubbering, red -haired 00:04:28.430 --> 00:04:32.040 boy in a nightgown. Just brutal. Wow. No holding 00:04:32.040 --> 00:04:34.480 back. None at all. It really shows how deeply 00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:37.060 malaise's realism offended the establishment 00:04:37.060 --> 00:04:39.220 view of how sacred subjects should look. But 00:04:39.220 --> 00:04:42.360 then, not long after, he paints Ophelia, 1851 00:04:42.360 --> 00:04:45.459 -52. Still incredibly detailed, but maybe less. 00:04:47.670 --> 00:04:49.970 religiously provocative. Ophelia is maybe the 00:04:49.970 --> 00:04:52.790 ultimate PRB painting in terms of that naturalist 00:04:52.790 --> 00:04:55.389 focus and sheer beauty. The detail is astonishing. 00:04:55.550 --> 00:04:57.209 He spent something like five months painting 00:04:57.209 --> 00:04:59.709 just the background foliage outdoors by the Hogs 00:04:59.709 --> 00:05:01.550 Mill River. Five months on the background. Yeah, 00:05:01.610 --> 00:05:03.430 battling the elements. And then you have the 00:05:03.430 --> 00:05:05.550 story of the model, Elizabeth Sittle. Posing 00:05:05.550 --> 00:05:08.170 in the bathtub. Floating in a bathtub full of 00:05:08.170 --> 00:05:11.170 water, kept warm by lamps underneath. Except 00:05:11.170 --> 00:05:13.889 the lamps went out, she got incredibly ill. It 00:05:13.889 --> 00:05:15.750 just shows the lengths they went to for that 00:05:15.750 --> 00:05:18.410 realism. That's dedication. Or obsession, maybe. 00:05:18.529 --> 00:05:21.930 A bit of both, probably. But while Ophelia and 00:05:21.930 --> 00:05:25.050 Christ were controversial, he did start to find 00:05:25.050 --> 00:05:27.610 popular success, too, didn't he? With paintings 00:05:27.610 --> 00:05:31.290 like A Huguenot. Right, A Huguenot. Yeah. 1851 00:05:31.290 --> 00:05:34.069 -52, again, that one seemed to hit a different 00:05:34.069 --> 00:05:36.870 nerve. It did. It had that PRB detail, but it 00:05:36.870 --> 00:05:40.029 also had this really powerful, relatable human 00:05:40.029 --> 00:05:43.050 story. A couple... torn apart by religious conflict 00:05:43.050 --> 00:05:46.050 during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, people 00:05:46.050 --> 00:05:48.269 responded to the emotion. So he could blend the 00:05:48.269 --> 00:05:50.250 technique with popular themes? He was learning 00:05:50.250 --> 00:05:52.350 how. He was proving he could be radical and connect 00:05:52.350 --> 00:05:54.269 with the public. He was on his way up. But then 00:05:54.269 --> 00:05:56.430 everything changes. The scandal. The scandal. 00:05:56.470 --> 00:05:58.709 It all revolves around John Ruskin. The famous 00:05:58.709 --> 00:06:00.829 art critic. The one who actually defended the 00:06:00.829 --> 00:06:04.089 PRB against Dickens. The very same. Ruskin was 00:06:04.089 --> 00:06:05.870 their champion, their intellectual supporter. 00:06:06.189 --> 00:06:08.970 He and Millais became quite close friends. And 00:06:08.970 --> 00:06:11.050 Ruskin introduces Millais to his wife, Effie 00:06:11.050 --> 00:06:14.009 Gray. Correct. Effie then models for Millais, 00:06:14.029 --> 00:06:16.949 for his painting, The Order of Release in 5253. 00:06:17.069 --> 00:06:19.569 They spend a lot of time together. And they fall 00:06:19.569 --> 00:06:22.870 in love? Deeply. Now, the context here is crucial, 00:06:23.069 --> 00:06:25.470 as you know. Effie and Ruskin had been married 00:06:25.470 --> 00:06:28.269 for several years. But the marriage was unconsummated. 00:06:28.449 --> 00:06:32.110 Exactly. Ruskin hadn't... Well, whatever reason, 00:06:32.209 --> 00:06:35.509 hotly debated by historians, he hadn't fulfilled 00:06:35.509 --> 00:06:37.529 the marriage physically. Which back then was 00:06:37.529 --> 00:06:39.670 grounds for an annulment, right? Not divorce, 00:06:39.930 --> 00:06:42.230 but saying the marriage never legally existed. 00:06:42.550 --> 00:06:44.930 Precisely. It was a very rare out for women. 00:06:45.389 --> 00:06:48.250 Effie's parents got involved. She filed for annulment 00:06:48.250 --> 00:06:50.790 based on Ruskin's impotence. And it was granted 00:06:50.790 --> 00:06:53.550 in 1854. It was a massive public scandal. And 00:06:53.550 --> 00:06:56.370 the following year, 1855. Effie marries John 00:06:56.370 --> 00:06:59.149 Millay. Yes. Which professionally for Millay 00:06:59.149 --> 00:07:02.329 was complicated. Complicated how? Well, for starters, 00:07:02.490 --> 00:07:05.110 he'd completely alienated John Ruskin, arguably 00:07:05.110 --> 00:07:07.449 the most powerful voice in British art criticism. 00:07:07.889 --> 00:07:09.889 Ruskin was never going to support his work again. 00:07:09.949 --> 00:07:12.290 In fact, quite the opposite. Right. And personally. 00:07:12.550 --> 00:07:15.110 Personally, he now had a wife and very quickly 00:07:15.110 --> 00:07:17.329 a growing family. They ended up having eight 00:07:17.329 --> 00:07:20.259 children together. Eight? That's a lot of mouths 00:07:20.259 --> 00:07:22.879 to feed in Victorian London. It's a huge financial 00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:25.899 undertaking. They move into a big house, 7 Cromwell 00:07:25.899 --> 00:07:29.500 Place in Kensington from 1862. Millais needed 00:07:29.500 --> 00:07:32.860 to earn serious money. And quickly. And this 00:07:32.860 --> 00:07:34.560 is where the big shift in his painting style 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:37.600 comes in. The move away from that painstaking 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:40.660 PRB detail. Directly linked, according to many 00:07:40.660 --> 00:07:43.459 sources, he started painting much faster using 00:07:43.459 --> 00:07:46.000 a broader technique. Less meticulous detail, 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:50.000 looser brushwork, thicker paint application impasto. 00:07:50.259 --> 00:07:52.939 Why the change in technique? Just speed. Speed 00:07:52.939 --> 00:07:55.920 was definitely a factor. That slow, layered PRB 00:07:55.920 --> 00:07:57.899 method just wasn't efficient if you needed to 00:07:57.899 --> 00:08:00.259 produce a lot of paintings to sell. The broader 00:08:00.259 --> 00:08:02.879 style allowed him to finish canvases much, much 00:08:02.879 --> 00:08:05.600 faster. So a practical decision driven by money 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:07.540 and family. That's certainly how his critics 00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:10.060 saw it. And the backlash was immediate and fierce. 00:08:10.360 --> 00:08:12.800 Ruskin probably still stinging from the annulment. 00:08:12.879 --> 00:08:16.220 He called the new style a catastrophe. A catastrophe. 00:08:16.500 --> 00:08:19.500 Not just bad, but like a tragic fall from grace. 00:08:19.839 --> 00:08:22.639 And others piled on. William Morris, another 00:08:22.639 --> 00:08:24.740 former associate. The designer and socialist. 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:28.019 Yeah. Morris basically accused Millais outright 00:08:28.019 --> 00:08:31.689 of selling out. sacrificing his artistic soul 00:08:31.689 --> 00:08:34.990 for money and popularity, joining the establishment 00:08:34.990 --> 00:08:39.330 he once fought against. Ouch. Did Millay ever 00:08:39.330 --> 00:08:41.289 defend himself against this? I mean, being called 00:08:41.289 --> 00:08:43.559 a sellout couldn't have felt good. No, and he 00:08:43.559 --> 00:08:46.320 didn't just take it. Later on, he argued back. 00:08:46.519 --> 00:08:48.799 He wrote an article in 1888, Thoughts on Our 00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:50.919 Art of Today, where he basically said the change 00:08:50.919 --> 00:08:53.100 wasn't about selling out. It was about growing 00:08:53.100 --> 00:08:56.159 confidence. Confidence? How so? He argued that 00:08:56.159 --> 00:08:58.379 as he matured, he didn't need the super tight 00:08:58.379 --> 00:09:00.539 detail anymore. He could paint with more boldness, 00:09:00.559 --> 00:09:03.500 more freedom. He even cited old masters like 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:06.460 Velazquez and Rembrandt as his models. Velazquez 00:09:06.460 --> 00:09:09.120 and Rembrandt, known for their loose, suggestive 00:09:09.120 --> 00:09:11.960 brushwork. Exactly. He was framing it as an evolution. 00:09:12.269 --> 00:09:14.370 towards a different kind of mastery, not a decline. 00:09:14.649 --> 00:09:17.110 Was that just spin, though? A way to justify 00:09:17.110 --> 00:09:19.470 the need to pay the bills? Or did people actually 00:09:19.470 --> 00:09:22.070 buy the artistic argument? That's the million 00:09:22.070 --> 00:09:24.389 -dollar question, isn't it? For the purists... 00:09:24.539 --> 00:09:27.480 Like Ruskin and Morris. No, it was purely commercial. 00:09:27.960 --> 00:09:30.799 But for others, especially younger artists and 00:09:30.799 --> 00:09:33.000 critics, they did see something else happening. 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:35.679 Like what? They saw that this broader style, 00:09:35.919 --> 00:09:38.440 this focus on bolder effects, actually connected 00:09:38.440 --> 00:09:41.440 with new trends emerging in the 1860s and 70s. 00:09:41.480 --> 00:09:45.179 It wasn't just about speed. It was maybe unintentionally 00:09:45.179 --> 00:09:47.059 at first tapping into the aesthetic movement. 00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:50.720 Ah, art for art's sake. Less about story, more 00:09:50.720 --> 00:09:54.500 about beauty and color and form. Precisely. Meleza's 00:09:54.500 --> 00:09:56.799 work started moving away from complex narratives 00:09:56.799 --> 00:10:00.500 towards more symbolic, atmospheric stuff. Paintings 00:10:00.500 --> 00:10:03.340 like the Eve of St. Agnes or the Somnambulist. 00:10:03.519 --> 00:10:05.460 And sources say he was actually supportive of 00:10:05.460 --> 00:10:07.799 Whistler, James McNeill Whistler, a key aesthetic 00:10:07.799 --> 00:10:10.480 figure. He was. He recognized the shift happening. 00:10:10.740 --> 00:10:13.460 His later work, with its broad areas of color 00:10:13.460 --> 00:10:16.120 and focus on mood, gained admiration from people 00:10:16.120 --> 00:10:19.159 who saw links to Whistler to Albert Moore. even 00:10:19.159 --> 00:10:21.159 saw his influence on the next generation like 00:10:21.159 --> 00:10:23.580 John Singer Sargent. So he was adapting, keeping 00:10:23.580 --> 00:10:26.590 himself relevant, even as tastes changed. Very 00:10:26.590 --> 00:10:29.490 successfully. And by the 1870s, he's leaning 00:10:29.490 --> 00:10:32.450 into this establishment role. He starts referencing 00:10:32.450 --> 00:10:34.990 the great British portraitists like Sir Joshua 00:10:34.990 --> 00:10:38.409 Reynolds alongside Velazquez again. And he paints 00:10:38.409 --> 00:10:41.470 these big, grand historical subjects. Themes 00:10:41.470 --> 00:10:43.450 that would resonate with Victorian Britain's 00:10:43.450 --> 00:10:46.190 sense of itself. Absolutely. Things like the 00:10:46.190 --> 00:10:48.389 two princes Edward and Richard in the Tower tapping 00:10:48.389 --> 00:10:51.750 into royal history and tragedy. Or paintings 00:10:51.750 --> 00:10:54.450 celebrating exploration and empire like the Northwest 00:10:54.450 --> 00:10:57.049 Passage or... Boyhood of Raleigh. These are big 00:10:57.049 --> 00:11:00.509 patriotic statements cementing his role as like 00:11:00.509 --> 00:11:02.909 the nation's painter. Pretty much. But, you know, 00:11:02.909 --> 00:11:04.730 for all the grand history paintings, what really 00:11:04.730 --> 00:11:07.409 made him incredibly wealthy and a household name? 00:11:07.509 --> 00:11:09.389 The children's portraits. The children's portraits. 00:11:09.509 --> 00:11:12.549 This was his path to megastardom and serious 00:11:12.549 --> 00:11:15.110 money. He painted these incredibly charming, 00:11:15.269 --> 00:11:17.789 often sentimental pictures of children that the 00:11:17.789 --> 00:11:20.549 public just adored. Things like Cherry Ripe featuring 00:11:20.549 --> 00:11:22.970 those Pettigrew sisters who became famous models 00:11:22.970 --> 00:11:27.049 themselves. Exactly. And an idol of 1745. But 00:11:27.049 --> 00:11:29.029 the absolute peak, or maybe the most controversial 00:11:29.029 --> 00:11:32.990 point, was bubbles. 1886. Bubbles. The painting 00:11:32.990 --> 00:11:35.289 of his little grandson, Willie James, blowing 00:11:35.289 --> 00:11:37.649 a soap bubble. That's the one. And the painting 00:11:37.649 --> 00:11:40.009 itself was popular. But what happened next is 00:11:40.009 --> 00:11:43.389 key. The rights were bought by A &F Pears, the 00:11:43.389 --> 00:11:45.429 soap company. And they turned it into one of 00:11:45.429 --> 00:11:47.789 the most famous advertisements ever. They did. 00:11:48.149 --> 00:11:51.210 Slapped the Pears soap logo on it and reproduced 00:11:51.210 --> 00:11:53.710 it everywhere. It became synonymous with the 00:11:53.710 --> 00:11:56.629 brand. Idealized childhood innocents used to 00:11:56.629 --> 00:11:59.029 sell soap. Was that the first time high art was 00:11:59.029 --> 00:12:01.480 used so directly in mass advertising? It was 00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:04.039 certainly one of the most high profile and defining 00:12:04.039 --> 00:12:07.080 moments. It sparked huge debate. Was Millais 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:10.059 bringing art to the masses? Or had the ultimate 00:12:10.059 --> 00:12:13.360 pre -Raphaelite rebel finally, definitively sold 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:15.600 his soul to commerce? What did Millais think? 00:12:15.700 --> 00:12:18.259 Was he okay with it? Well, he was paid very well 00:12:18.259 --> 00:12:20.679 for it. Apparently he initially resisted, but 00:12:20.679 --> 00:12:23.440 eventually agreed. It cemented his popular fame, 00:12:23.559 --> 00:12:26.179 but also solidified the sellout narrative for 00:12:26.179 --> 00:12:28.220 his detractors. And it wasn't just paintings, 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:29.840 right? He was doing commercial work in other 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:32.990 areas too. Illustration. Hugely successful book 00:12:32.990 --> 00:12:36.190 illustrator. Very well paid for it, too. He did 00:12:36.190 --> 00:12:38.710 illustrations for big names like Anthony Trollope, 00:12:38.830 --> 00:12:41.789 poems by Tennyson. His skill with narrative from 00:12:41.789 --> 00:12:44.450 the PRB days must have helped there. Absolutely. 00:12:44.590 --> 00:12:47.070 And some of his illustrations were artworks in 00:12:47.070 --> 00:12:49.340 their own right. Those complex drawings he did 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:51.580 for the Parables of Jesus, published in 1864. 00:12:51.740 --> 00:12:53.840 Yes. They were so highly regarded, they were 00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:56.019 later adapted into stained glass windows for 00:12:56.019 --> 00:12:57.899 a church in Scotland, Kinnell Parish Church. 00:12:58.059 --> 00:13:01.240 So he's operating across fine art, history painting, 00:13:01.419 --> 00:13:04.419 portraiture, advertising, illustration. He's 00:13:04.419 --> 00:13:07.419 everywhere. A true Victorian multimedia star, 00:13:07.620 --> 00:13:09.620 in a way. You could say that, and the official 00:13:09.620 --> 00:13:11.840 art establishment absolutely embraced him. His 00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:14.220 Royal Academy career track reflects that, doesn't 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:17.019 it? Yeah. Associate member in 53, full member 00:13:17.019 --> 00:13:19.399 by 63. Right. He was a major figure within the 00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:22.039 Academy for decades. But the absolute pinnacle 00:13:22.039 --> 00:13:24.960 of establishment recognition comes in 1885. Queen 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:27.679 Victoria steps in. Queen Victoria makes him Sir 00:13:27.679 --> 00:13:31.259 John Everett Millais Baronet, a hereditary title. 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:34.039 The first artist ever to get a hereditary title, 00:13:34.139 --> 00:13:36.899 not just a knighthood. The very first. It was 00:13:36.899 --> 00:13:39.659 monumental. It basically integrated him and his 00:13:39.659 --> 00:13:42.240 lineage into the British aristocracy, the ultimate 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:44.679 insider status for the former rebel. And then 00:13:44.679 --> 00:13:47.340 right at the end of his life, the final institutional 00:13:47.340 --> 00:13:49.940 crown. Elected president of the Royal Academy 00:13:49.940 --> 00:13:53.519 in 1896, after Lord Leighton died, he'd reached 00:13:53.519 --> 00:13:56.480 the absolute top. Though, sadly, he didn't hold 00:13:56.480 --> 00:13:58.539 the position for long. Before we get to the end, 00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:00.679 there's that other fascinating thread in his 00:14:00.679 --> 00:14:04.269 later work, The Landscapes. especially the Scottish 00:14:04.269 --> 00:14:07.110 ones. Yes, this is a really important counterpoint 00:14:07.110 --> 00:14:09.950 to the popular, sometimes sentimental, work. 00:14:10.230 --> 00:14:13.149 From about 1870 onwards, he starts painting these 00:14:13.149 --> 00:14:16.009 large -scale landscapes, often inspired by his 00:14:16.009 --> 00:14:18.129 annual hunting and fishing trips to Perthshire. 00:14:18.370 --> 00:14:20.169 And these weren't pretty picturesque scenes. 00:14:20.269 --> 00:14:23.110 Not at all. They're often quite bleak, autumnal, 00:14:23.190 --> 00:14:26.919 moody. Think windswept moors, desolate locks, 00:14:27.080 --> 00:14:29.100 a sense of melancholy in the passage of time. 00:14:29.179 --> 00:14:31.360 Very atmospheric. Does that connect back somehow 00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:34.000 to the mood of his earlier works? Like autumn 00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:36.230 leaves? I think it does. There's an emotional 00:14:36.230 --> 00:14:39.590 depth there, a focus on transience. He's not 00:14:39.590 --> 00:14:42.110 painting with that microscopic PRB detail anymore, 00:14:42.269 --> 00:14:44.809 obviously. But the intensity of observation is 00:14:44.809 --> 00:14:46.909 still there. It's just expressed differently 00:14:46.909 --> 00:14:49.429 with broader strokes, capturing the feel of the 00:14:49.429 --> 00:14:52.830 place. Any cue examples? Chill October from 1870 00:14:52.830 --> 00:14:55.230 is often seen as the first major one. Really 00:14:55.230 --> 00:14:58.559 captures that damp end of year feeling. Or later, 00:14:58.740 --> 00:15:01.960 Christmas Eve, 1887, which was his first big 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:05.279 snow scene, all fog and texture. They show he 00:15:05.279 --> 00:15:07.980 was still capable of profound, serious work alongside 00:15:07.980 --> 00:15:10.059 the popular stuff. So he becomes president of 00:15:10.059 --> 00:15:12.980 the RA in 1896, the peak of his career. But he 00:15:12.980 --> 00:15:16.720 dies later that same year, August 1896. Throat 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:18.259 cancer. And his last painting was unfinished. 00:15:18.519 --> 00:15:20.840 Yeah, the last track. Based on an illustration 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:23.379 for his son's book, apparently depicting a hunter 00:15:23.379 --> 00:15:25.919 lying dead in the wilderness, a rather somber 00:15:25.919 --> 00:15:28.700 final image. And given his status? He was buried 00:15:28.700 --> 00:15:30.759 in St. Paul's Cathedral, the ultimate establishment 00:15:30.759 --> 00:15:33.299 resting place. But even after his death, the 00:15:33.299 --> 00:15:35.399 controversies continued. There was something 00:15:35.399 --> 00:15:38.259 about his statue. Oh, yes. The Prince of Wales 00:15:38.259 --> 00:15:40.639 commissioned a statue by Thomas Brock, which 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:42.960 was put up outside the Tate Gallery in 1905. 00:15:43.419 --> 00:15:46.480 A tribute to a national hero, right? Seems straightforward 00:15:46.480 --> 00:15:49.059 enough. But fast forward to the mid -20th century. 00:15:49.690 --> 00:15:52.570 Modernism is dominant, and Victorian art, especially 00:15:52.570 --> 00:15:55.009 someone like Millais, seen as the epitome of 00:15:55.009 --> 00:15:58.129 the establishment, is deeply unfashionable. So 00:15:58.129 --> 00:16:00.529 the statue becomes a problem. A big problem for 00:16:00.529 --> 00:16:03.450 some. The Tate director at the time, Norman Reed, 00:16:03.610 --> 00:16:05.929 actually tried repeatedly to get the statue removed 00:16:05.929 --> 00:16:08.809 in the 50s and 60s. Removed? Why? He famously 00:16:08.809 --> 00:16:12.509 called its presence positively harmful. For Reid 00:16:12.509 --> 00:16:14.549 and the modernist viewpoint, Malaya represented 00:16:14.549 --> 00:16:18.149 everything outdated, sentimental, narrative -driven, 00:16:18.250 --> 00:16:21.259 commercially successful art. The statue was a 00:16:21.259 --> 00:16:24.059 symbol of a past they wanted to bury. Millais 00:16:24.059 --> 00:16:26.200 was the ultimate sellout whose ghosts needed 00:16:26.200 --> 00:16:28.799 exercising. So the statue represented a kind 00:16:28.799 --> 00:16:31.779 of artistic embarrassment. To the modernist gatekeepers, 00:16:31.899 --> 00:16:34.559 yes. It was a sign that Britain hadn't fully 00:16:34.559 --> 00:16:37.259 embraced the correct path of our history. Reid 00:16:37.259 --> 00:16:39.259 failed to get it removed completely for years, 00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:41.000 but it was eventually moved to a less prominent 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:44.570 spot in 2000. Still a bit contentious. But that 00:16:44.570 --> 00:16:47.570 negative view, that dismissal of his later work, 00:16:47.730 --> 00:16:49.809 that seems to have changed again more recently, 00:16:49.929 --> 00:16:52.980 hasn't it? Massively. There's been a huge reassessment. 00:16:53.139 --> 00:16:55.480 Art historians now look at his later style not 00:16:55.480 --> 00:16:58.440 just as a commercial compromise, but in the context 00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:01.679 of wider European art trends. That looser brushwork, 00:17:01.759 --> 00:17:05.079 the focus on color and mood, the speed. It's 00:17:05.079 --> 00:17:08.220 now seen less as selling out and more as anticipating 00:17:08.220 --> 00:17:11.279 aspects of impressionism or aestheticism. His 00:17:11.279 --> 00:17:14.259 move away from pure narrative is seen as, well... 00:17:14.460 --> 00:17:17.500 almost proto -modernist in its own way. The catastrophe 00:17:17.500 --> 00:17:20.359 Ruskin saw is now viewed as an interesting evolution. 00:17:20.740 --> 00:17:23.400 And beyond the art history debates, his personal 00:17:23.400 --> 00:17:26.380 story keeps him in the public eye. That Ruskin 00:17:26.380 --> 00:17:28.240 -Effie -Malace triangle is just too dramatic 00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:30.680 to ignore. Absolutely. It's perfect fodder for 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:32.839 drama. You've got films like Effie Gray from 00:17:32.839 --> 00:17:36.339 2014, the BBC series Desperate Romantics. That 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:38.220 story guarantees he won't just be a dusty name 00:17:38.220 --> 00:17:40.119 in a textbook. People connect with the human 00:17:40.119 --> 00:17:42.079 drama. And the public still turns out for his 00:17:42.079 --> 00:17:45.029 exhibitions. In huge numbers, that big Tate Britain 00:17:45.029 --> 00:17:48.089 retrospective in 2007, it pulled in over 150 00:17:48.089 --> 00:17:51.490 ,000 visitors in London alone. And when it traveled 00:17:51.490 --> 00:17:54.529 internationally, Amsterdam, Japan, the total 00:17:54.529 --> 00:17:57.789 audience was over 660 ,000. That tells you something. 00:17:58.029 --> 00:17:59.630 It really does. People still want to see his 00:17:59.630 --> 00:18:03.150 work, all of it. Radical, establishment, controversial, 00:18:03.589 --> 00:18:06.269 sentimental. It's all part of the story now, 00:18:06.369 --> 00:18:08.049 and people are fascinated by the whole package. 00:18:08.309 --> 00:18:10.430 So wrapping this up, it's an incredible journey. 00:18:11.009 --> 00:18:13.960 Youngest RA student. revolutionary pre -Raphaelite, 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:16.839 shocks everyone. Then the scandal, the marriage, 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:19.359 the eight kids, the style shift. Becomes Sir 00:18:19.359 --> 00:18:21.680 John the Baronet, paints bubbles, gets elected 00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:24.279 president of the RA, all while doing these moody 00:18:24.279 --> 00:18:26.660 Scottish landscapes. It's almost too much for 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:29.019 one life. It really is. The connection between 00:18:29.019 --> 00:18:31.119 the personal drama needing to support Effie and 00:18:31.119 --> 00:18:33.240 the family and the professional change seems 00:18:33.240 --> 00:18:35.440 undeniable, though. It seems like the engine, 00:18:35.579 --> 00:18:37.680 doesn't it? Personal circumstances, financial 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:40.859 pressure, maybe growing artistic confidence, 00:18:40.980 --> 00:18:44.660 too. It all combined to reshape his career, a 00:18:44.660 --> 00:18:47.440 career that was revolutionary, then widely criticized 00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:50.759 as a sellout, and now kind of rehabilitated as 00:18:50.759 --> 00:18:53.339 complex and maybe even predictive. So the final 00:18:53.339 --> 00:18:55.440 thought for you listening to this, what do we 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:59.119 make of Malay today? You have the intense, painstaking 00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:02.079 detail of Ophelia, on one hand, absolute artistic 00:19:02.079 --> 00:19:04.059 devotion. And on the other, you have the immense 00:19:04.059 --> 00:19:06.319 popularity and commercial afterlife of Bubbles, 00:19:06.380 --> 00:19:09.319 the soap ad. He faced harsh judgment for choosing 00:19:09.319 --> 00:19:12.220 popularity and wealth. But if that later work, 00:19:12.319 --> 00:19:14.859 the supposed sellout stuff, is now seen as forward 00:19:14.859 --> 00:19:17.220 looking in some ways. Does that change how we 00:19:17.220 --> 00:19:20.259 view the choice? Does massive enduring popularity 00:19:20.259 --> 00:19:22.599 ultimately offer its own kind of validation, 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:25.200 even if it comes at the cost of early ideals? 00:19:25.599 --> 00:19:28.099 Maybe Millais' real genius wasn't just the early 00:19:28.099 --> 00:19:30.619 radicalism, but his ability to navigate the pressures, 00:19:30.880 --> 00:19:33.539 adapt and thrive in the complex world of art, 00:19:33.599 --> 00:19:36.200 commerce and family. It's a timeless dilemma 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:39.019 for any creator, isn't it? Integrity versus success, 00:19:39.299 --> 00:19:41.420 purity versus popularity. Millais lived that 00:19:41.420 --> 00:19:43.180 conflict perhaps more dramatically than anyone.