Sir John Everett Millais
1829–1896 · 8 works
John Everett Millais began as one of the young artists who formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in London. Their early work challenged accepted painting conventions through close detail and subjects drawn from literature and religion. His later career brought a different kind of public success, but storytelling remained important. In Portia, for example, he dressed a model in a costume worn by the actor Ellen Terry, bringing Shakespeare’s heroine into the studio. Across drawings and paintings, pose and costume can do as much storytelling as a complicated setting.
8 works · 1850–1873
Notice what a figure’s hands and clothing tell you before reading the title. Which details make the character seem particular?
1850–1853 · 3 works
Walk these 3
1857–1873 · 5 works
Walk these 5
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Full-length Portrait of a Woman, 1846
William Holman Hunt
My Beautiful Lady (top); Of My Lady in Death (bottom), frontispiece to The Germ, No. 1, 1850
