John Everett Millais biography in Biographies from the artzine on artrepublic.com

Maillais’s images of stoic women and sensuous beauties have become iconic and capture Victorian ideals of spirituality and veiled eroticism. But in later life he also produced landscapes and society portraits as well as nostalgic fancy pictures such as Bubbles which became famous as the advert for Pears Soap.

Millais was born in Southampton in 1829 to a wealthy family. He was considered a child prodigy and in 1840 he was admitted to the Royal Academy schools in London as their youngest ever student. It was at the Royal Academy he met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rosetti and in 1884 they founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In 1855 Millais married Effie Chalmers, who had previously been married to the artist John Ruskin. They live in Perth in Scotland until 1861 when they returned to London and Millais began painting society portraits. In1896 he was elected President of the Royal Academy of arts, but sadly he died later that year.