John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896)

John Everett Millais came from a well-to-do Jersey family. His remarkable early talent enabled him to enter the Royal Academy Schools in 1840 as its youngest ever student.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in September 1848 following an evening in Millais's studio, when he showed his friends engravings after the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Millais produced two crucial early Pre-Raphaelite painting, 'Isabella' and 'Christ in the House of his Parents', the latter provoking remarkably hostile criticism in 1850, notably from Charles Dickens.

His work proved popular at the Academy in 1852, and led to a series of rather sentimental images painted in the 1850s, such as 'The Blind Girl'. Millais was befriended by John Ruskin whose portrait he painted in Glenfinlas, Scotland, in 1853; there he fell in love with Ruskin's wife Effie, marrying her in 1855 after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled.

By 1858 he had drifted away from a Pre-Raphaelite style towards a type of historical genre painting which brought him huge success. Millais also became a celebrated portraitist.

Millais was the first artist to be created a baronet, in 1885. Elected President of the Royal Academy in 1896, he died within the year and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.