Millais

Sir JohnEverett Millais PRA, portrait painter and founder, with Holman Hunt and Rossetti, of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, was a towering figure in Victorian England. But as a young man, whilst on holiday with John Ruskin and Ruskin's wife, Effie, he fell in love with Effie whose marriage to the impotent Ruskin was later annulled. In due course she married Millais. Their romance, though it shocked Queen Victoria, is one of the great love stories of the century. It ended forty years later when Millais, on his death bed, persuaded the Queen to receive Effie as a last gesture to one of her favourite artists.

Sir John Millais was also a passionately keen sportsman who, throughout his adult life, went to Scotland every autumn to shoot and fish. He shared his enthusiasm for wildlife with his son, John Guille Millais, who from the age of eight 'longed to be a naturalist and artist'. J.G. Millais was later to become a celebrated and prolific writer on natural history. His expeditions and safaris were recorded in his journals and sketchbooks as he painted and drew the birds and animals he observed on his shooting expeditions. He also goes down in history as the principal discoverer of Newfoundland's hinterland.

Raoul Millais, grandson of Sir John and son of J.G., accompanied his father on safari, also painting and drawing as they travelled in Africa. His affectionate recollections of J.G., together with memories of his own long and interesting life as a portrait painter and equestrian, as told to J.N.P. Watson, make this sage, covering three generations over more than 150 years, particularly lively and colourful.

A feature of the book are the many fine paintings and drawings by the three artists mingled with photographs of their friends and contemporaries.