- 112
Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A. 1829-1896
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
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Description
- Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A.
- the benjamites seizing their brides
- signed and inscribed l.r.: J. E. Millais. Study for Gold Medal
pen and ink
Provenance
Sold on behalf of the executors of Mrs A. J. Millais of Bunch Lane House, Haslemere, Christie's, 30 July 1924, lot 119, bought by Gooden and Fox;
Private collection
Private collection
Literature
John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, Preseident of the Royal Academy, vol. 1, 1899, repr. p. 23
Catalogue Note
The present drawing was made in 1840 by Millais when he was only ten years old and predates his oil painting of the same subject and composition The Tribe of Benjamin Seizing the Daughters of Shiloh (offered Sotheby's, New York, 11 December 2003, lot 2). The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1848 where it won a gold medal. This recently rediscoverd drawing is one of the earliest known pictures by Millias.
Millais’s artistic training had commenced at the age of eight, when he was enrolled at Henry Sass’s school, being put to copying engravings and drawing from casts of antique sculpture. In 1840, the year this drawing was made, he became a probationer at the Royal Academy schools, and shortly afterwards was admitted as a full student after submitting a study from the antique and anatomical studies. The artist’s drawings of his early period are consistently treated in outline, and with figures carefully placed across the width in a broadly symmetrical form and in a shallow depth of field, thus revealing his debt to Neo-classical principles. The present drawing shows the strong influence of the linear style of draughtsmanship of John Flaxman, a figure who was still revered at the Royal Academy, where he had served as Professor of Sculpture from 1810.
Millais’s artistic training had commenced at the age of eight, when he was enrolled at Henry Sass’s school, being put to copying engravings and drawing from casts of antique sculpture. In 1840, the year this drawing was made, he became a probationer at the Royal Academy schools, and shortly afterwards was admitted as a full student after submitting a study from the antique and anatomical studies. The artist’s drawings of his early period are consistently treated in outline, and with figures carefully placed across the width in a broadly symmetrical form and in a shallow depth of field, thus revealing his debt to Neo-classical principles. The present drawing shows the strong influence of the linear style of draughtsmanship of John Flaxman, a figure who was still revered at the Royal Academy, where he had served as Professor of Sculpture from 1810.