The Rescue: preliminary cartoon

John Everett Millais

Date: 1855

Materials: Pencil, charcoal, and red and brown chalk 

Praised by Ruskin

Millais's large painting 'The Rescue' was conceived in 1854, after he and his brother William had witnessed a large fire in central London.

"We went home", William recalled, "much impressed with what we had seen, and my brother said, 'Soldiers and sailors have been praised on canvas a thousand times.My next picture shall be of the fireman'".  

On its exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1855, John Ruskin - who had little cause to be kind to Millais personally - generously described 'The Rescue' as: "the only great picture exhibited this year; but this is very great". 

Full-scale drawing

This vigorous cartoon is a rare example, within Pre-Raphaelite practice at least, of a full-scale preparatory design; such work would normally have been done, in simpler form, on the canvas itself and subsequently obliterated by paint.