Sir John Everett Millais, PRA

(British, 1829-1896)

A Reverie

Footnotes

We are grateful to Dr. Malcolm Warner for confirming the attribution to Sir John Everett Millais on the basis of photographs.

Provenance
By descent through the artist's family.

Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, Works by the late Sir John Everett Millais, Bart., President of the Royal Academy, 1898, no. 213.
London, Royal Academy, Millais, 1967, no. 37.
St. Helier, Jersey Museum, Sir John Everett Millais, Bart., P.R.A. (1829-1896), an exhibition celebrating the 150th anniversary of Millais' birth, 20 August - 29 September, 1979, no. 45.

Literature
John Guille Millais, The life and letters of Sir John Everett Millais, Vol. II, London, 1899, p. 421 (illustrated p. 423).

In the late 1860s, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan and the painter Sir John Everett Millais joined forces on a project to combine the arts. Millais' son, John Guille Millais, in his book The life and letters of Sir John Everett Millais recalls his own conversation with Sullivan, who said 'It had long been my desire and ambition to do a work which should combine the three sister Arts, poetry, painting and music; and this idea I imparted to Tennyson and Millais. They both fell in with the notion, and Tennyson for this purpose wrote the little cycle of songs called The Window, or the Songs of the Wrens. These I set to music and Millais began the illustrations; each song was to have its accompanying picture.'¹

The Window or The Songs of the Wrens was originally designed to bring fine-arts to the middle class and it was planned to be widely published for the Christmas Market of 1870.² It would bring together pictures, poems and songs for private performance and enjoyment.

Due to unforeseen complications with Tennyson and, later, Millais's unavailability, only one drawing was completed: A Reverie, the present lot. Sullivan described the work thus: 'It was a lovely drawing of a girl at a window, birds flying around and 'vine and eglantine' trailing about it.'³

A Reverie (and, indeed, Millais' original enthusiasm for the entire project) is evidence of Millais' passion for music.⁴ Delicate handling of the subject matter and Millais' expert draughtsmanship and attention to detail contributes to the overarching beauty of the work.

¹ John Guille Millais, The life and letters of Sir John Everett Millais, Vol. II, London, 1899, p. 421.
² Colette Colligan and Margaret Linely, Media, Technology and Literature in the 19th Century: Image, Sound, Touch, 2011, p. 125.
³ John Guille Millais, The life and letters of Sir John Everett Millais, Vol. II, London, 1899, p. 421.
⁴ Ibid, p. 422.