Author Description

A child prodigy - he entered the Royal Academy as its youngest ever student at the age of just 11 - John Everett Millais (1829-1896) rose to prominence as one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In the view of the art critic John Ruskin, Millais was "the most powerful of them all", but he also allied himself with the Victorian artistic establishment. He achieved fame and great wealth as the painter of some of the era's best-known pictures, including "Ophelia", "Christ in the House of His Parents" and "The Boyhood of Raleigh", as well as portraits of the most celebrated men and fashionable women of the day, numerous paintings of children, engravings and illustrative work. His private life was considered scandalous (he was expelled from school and ran off with Effie, the wife of Ruskin), and yet he rose to the highest ranks of British society, becoming the first artist to be made a baronet, and was elected President of the Royal Academy. His burial in St Paul's Cathedral was a final measure of public acclaim for a painter whose work has never been equalled. Published to coincide with the centenary of the death of Millais, the book celebrates the life and work of the most successful British painter of the 19th century.