Millais, John Everett (1829-1896) - 1848-49 Isabella (National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery)
Millais showed a prodigious natural facility for drawing, and his parents groomed him from an early age to become an artist. His father was a man of independent means from an old Jersey family. He spent his childhood in Southampton, Jersey and Dinan in Brittany, before going to London in 1838. After a brief period at Henry Sass’s private art school, he was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools in 1840, its youngest-ever student. He won a silver medal there in 1843 for his drawing from the Antique, made his début at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1846 with the accomplished though conventional history painting Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru (London, V&A) and won a gold medal in 1847 for the Tribe of Benjamin Seizing the Daughters of Shiloh (priv. coll.), a composition with struggling nudes in the manner of William Etty.
Millais, John Everett (1829-1896) - 1848-49 Isabella (National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery)
Millais showed a prodigious natural facility for drawing, and his parents groomed him from an early age to become an artist. His father was a man of independent means from an old Jersey family. He spent his childhood in Southampton, Jersey and Dinan in Brittany, before going to London in 1838. After a brief period at Henry Sass’s private art school, he was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools in 1840, its youngest-ever student. He won a silver medal there in 1843 for his drawing from the Antique, made his début at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1846 with the accomplished though conventional history painting Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru (London, V&A) and won a gold medal in 1847 for the Tribe of Benjamin Seizing the Daughters of Shiloh (priv. coll.), a composition with struggling nudes in the manner of William Etty.