John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais (1829–1896) was born in Southampton to a family from Jersey, where he spent most of his early childhood. At eleven he became the youngest student ever admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, and there met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at his family's house in Gower Street, London. Christ in the House of His Parents, painted in 1849–50, caused controversy for its realistic portrayal of the Holy Family as working people in a cluttered carpenter's workshop. Ophelia, painted in 1851–52, builds a dense, elaborate surface from closely observed natural detail. From the mid-1850s, after his marriage to Effie, the former wife of his early champion John Ruskin, he moved towards a broader manner and became one of the wealthiest artists of his day. He was made a baronet in 1885 and elected President of the Royal Academy in 1896, the year of his death. Two works here: Ophelia and Christ in the House of His Parents.