John Everett Millais at Van Gogh Museum on artrepublic.com

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One of the exhibition’s highlights is Millais’ painting of Ophelia which is being shown for the first time in the Netherlands. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Tate Britain in London where John Everett Millais can be seen until 13 January 2008. The exhibition charts the changes in Millais’ style, from his most uninhibited ‘primitive’ and confrontational works produced during his Pre-Raphaelite period to popular, nostalgic subjects. The atmospheric landscapes that made such an impact on Vincent van Gogh will also be shown. 

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At the end of 1848 Millais, along with other artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, set up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This group of painters, poets and critics rejected the academicism traditionally promulgated by the Royal Academy. They advocated instead a return to a straightforward simplicity in art (dating from before Raphael) which they believed had been lost in the Renaissance. Paintings from this early Pre-Raphaelite period such as Christ in the house of his parents (‘The carpenter's shop’) afforded Millais the image of an ‘enfant terrible’. The detailed realism was denounced as repulsive and perverse. By contrast Millais’ technical skills and his incredibly precise attention to detail were widely praised, also in his later career. Midway through the 1850s Millais put aside his preference for literary subjects in favour of a new aesthetic. In this he presaged the emergence of the English Aesthetic Movement, whose artists favoured a sensual style aimed at expressing a general poetic mood or the beauty of the modern woman. Just as he had in his earlier Pre-Raphaelite works, Millais imbued these images with an unprecedented depth of psychological insight.

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After 1870 Millais turned for inspiration to the tradition of Old Masters such as Titian, Velázquez and Rembrandt. In doing so he reached out to a new public alongside the true connoisseur, one that was particularly keen on drama. As a celebrated English painter he was repeatedly commissioned for portraits of politicians, writers and people from the upper middle classes, such as the poet Alfred Tennyson and Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. He also painted portraits of children, including his own. These intimate children’s portraits frequently feature symbols such as fragile blooms or ephemeral soap bubbles, that underline the fleeting nature of youth. 

Central to the exhibition is Millais’ internationally famed Ophelia (1851-1852), inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The painting depicts Ophelia, driven mad by her beloved Hamlet’s murder of her father, drowning herself. The canvas exhibits a subtle play of mysticism, an extremely refined technique and a restrained sense of drama, and has exerted a strong influence on a string of artists after Millais right up to the present day.

OPENING HOURS: Daily: 10.00 - 18.00 Fri: 10.00 - 22.00

Image Captions: 

Image 1: John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Ophelia, 1851-1852, Tate, London

Image 2: The bridge of sighs, 1858, John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Geoffroy Richard Everett Millais Collection

Image 3: Ferdinand lured by Ariel, 1849-1850, John Everett Millais (1829-1896), The Makins Collection

Image 4: Untitled, 2006, Hellen van Meene (1972), Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London