Sir John Everett Millais, PRA

(British, 1829-1896)

Forget-Me-Not

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist and his wife, Effie, Lady Millais.
Her bequest (will of 26 July 1897, Scottish Probate Office) to their son John Guille Millais.
Sold by John Guille Millais, Christie's, 26 May 1900 (lot 100), bought by Sir James Kitson, Bart. (later 1st Baron Airedale), Gledhow Hall, Leeds, 1,500 guineas.
By descent to his daughter Emily Kitson.
Sold from her estate, Tower Lodge, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 28 November 1961, bought by her first cousin once removed Grosvenor Talbot Griffith, Old Swindon House, Swindon Village, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Bequeathed to the present owners.
Private collection, UK.

Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, 1883, no. 323.
Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1884, no. 51.
London, Royal Academy, Works by the late Sir John Everett Millais, Bart., President of the Royal Academy, 1898, no. 121.
Kitakyushu, Municipal Museum of Art & Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Art, Millais, (exhibition organized by Tate, London), 2008, no. 55.

Literature
Athenaeum, 5 May 1883, p. 575.
Morning Post, 5 May 1883, p. 5.
Times, 5 May 1883, p. 12.
Illustrated London News, 5 May 1883, p. 438.
Illustrated London News, 12 May 1883, p. 470.
London Evening Standard, 24 May 1883, p. 2.
Graphic, 26 May 1883, p. 20.
The Age, (Melbourne, Australia), supplement, 23 June 1883, p. 2.
Art Journal, July 1883, p. 218.
Art Journal, August 1883, p. 254.
Beatrix Potter, journal entry, 11 November 1883, The Journal of Beatrix Potter 1881–1897, transcribed from her code writings by Leslie Linder, 1989, p. 56.
Magazine of Art, volume VII, April 1884, p. xxviii.
Marion Harry Spielmann, Millais and His Works. With special reference to the exhibition at the Royal Academy 1898 . . . with a Chapter "Thoughts on Our Art of To-Day" by Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., PRA, Edinburgh and London, 1898, pp. 122 & 176 ('List of Oil Paintings', no. 252.).
John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy, 1899, volume II, pp. 236 (reproduced) & 482 ('Chronological List of Millais' Work').

When Forget-Me-Not was first exhibited, at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1883, the critic of the Athenaeum magazine called it 'a portrait in character'. It was generally recognized as a likeness of the artist's daughter Effie James (1858–1911), although her outfit and the title of the work suggested something other than a straightforward portrait; she was both being herself and playing a part, both sitter and model. Her summer dress with matching sash and ribbons was closer to fancy dress than real-life clothing of the time, and the style vaguely eighteenth-century. This was what the critic meant by 'a portrait in character'. Millais presents his daughter as a Victorian young woman with a touch of the aristocratic lady of a bygone age. She sits against a park or garden background with little definition to anything beyond some sprigs of honeysuckle, hinting at a love of nature on Effie's part but with little to distract from her figure. The general presentation, like the costume, recalls portraits of the Georgian era. In his middle age Millais embraced conventions and traditions of British painting which he had reviled as a young Pre-Raphaelite. A pioneer of the 'eighteenth century revival' in Victorian art and design, he painted loosely-brushed recollections of British masters of the past, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney—alluding to their works as they, in turn, had alluded to the works of their revered predecessor Anthony van Dyck. Gainsborough held a special appeal since he too had been a fond father who loved to paint his daughters.

It is difficult to say whether Forget-Me-Not was begun primarily as a portrait or as a so-called 'fancy picture'—that is, whether it was private and intended for the family, or commercial and intended to be sold. Millais may have kept both possibilities open as he painted and exhibited the work, although as a young-woman subject it would not have been quite as immediately saleable as his nostalgic paintings of children. On balance it was likely painted more with family purposes in mind; the family certainly kept it, at least until the artist and his wife had died. It may even have had a private meaning for them. The forget-me-nots that Effie has been picking gently suggest what she might be thinking—'forget me not'—as a daughter who has left home; she was now twenty-four years old, married, and the mother of two little boys. Writing for the Art Journal, one critic thought Effie was in a state of yearning, with 'a soft, pleading expression in her wistful eyes'. One can imagine her father coming up with the 'forget me not' conceit as both an expression of paternal affection (he would hope she cared to be remembered) and, given his love of humour, a chance for quips and raillery. He would later use the title The Last Rose of Summer for the portrait of another daughter, Mary; she was his 'last rose of summer' as the one who never married and stayed in the family home, helping him in his work and public duties until the end. Alongside Forget-Me-Not, Millais began another painting of Effie on a canvas the same size, in more or less the same pose though wearing a different, more contemporary dress. Finished as a gift for Effie herself in 1885, it now belongs to one of her great grandchildren.

Named after her mother, Effie was the artist's second child, his eldest daughter, and one of his favourite models. She appears in more of her father's works than any of her siblings; as a child she posed for the popular My First Sermon and its sequel, My Second Sermon. From the age of ten she attended a boarding school in Forest Hill, south London, with her sister Mary; when she was seventeen the girls stayed in Paris for a time to study languages and the piano. Good-looking and sociable, Effie was delighted by the round of balls, parties, and at-homes that she attended in London as a girl. On 28 November 1879 she married Captain William James, an officer in the Royal Scots Greys and son of the eminent judge Sir William Milbourne James. They had two sons, George and William ('Willie'), and two daughters, Phyllis and Sylvia. Willie was the model for Bubbles, which became famous as an advertisement for Pears' soap. Both sons pursued military careers like their father. George became an army captain and was killed in the First World War. Willie (nicknamed 'Bubbles' even as an adult) had a distinguished career in the navy, serving as an admiral and commander-in-chief at Portsmouth.

Millais painted Forget-Me-Not in January–February 1883, and his friend and neighbour Rupert Potter took photographs of the work in progress. (Potter's famous daughter, Beatrix, often visited Millais's studio with her father and mentioned having seen Forget-Me-Not there in her journal.) It was finished by March, and Potter photographed it again, now framed, among other paintings ready for submission to the spring exhibitions—in the case of Forget-Me-Not to the Royal Academy. Joseph Parkin Mayall also photographed Millais's studio in March 1883, in one view showing the present lot, with the artist himself seated close by (see illustration). The Potter and Mayall photographs show that the present frame is the original one, chosen by the artist and typical of the designs he favoured.

At the Royal Academy exhibition, which opened in early May, Forget-Me-Not was well received. 'Her expression has been vitalized with that felicity for which the artist is renowned, and in respect to which not many old or modern masters surpass him,' remarked the critic of the Athenaeum. 'This charming figure is notable for its fine and pure illumination and the soundness and solidity of the carnations.' For the London Evening Standard it was 'a single instance of his faculty in seizing the freshness and the happy audacity of English youth', for the Graphic 'an admirable portrait of a lady of gracious beauty sitting in a simple attitude with a bunch of flowers in her hand'. The London correspondent of the Australian newspaper The Age wrote that 'the pretty face shines and sparkles in cheek and eye; flowers and jewels and snow could not be brighter or purer'.

Effie James's life as a wife and mother was to take an intensely painful turn. In 1890 her husband transferred from the Royal Scots Greys to the 16th Lancers in Lucknow, India, as a major. He was joined there by Effie and their daughters, the sons being left in London in the care of their great aunt Alice Stibbard. In a fall from his horse while pig-sticking, James sustained a serious head injury; he was invalided home but returned before fully recovering, his judgment impaired. Taking responsibility for an ill-advised order that led to casualties among the men under his command, he committed suicide. Eight days later their daughter Phyllis died from a disease, aged seven. Effie never recovered from the trauma of losing her husband and daughter in such circumstances. She died at her home in Windsor at the age of fifty-two.

Forget-Me-Not was left by Effie's mother to one of her younger brothers, John Guille Millais, author of the two-volume biography of their father. Evidently not too sentimental about a portrait of his sister, John Guille sold it at Christie's about two and a half years later. The fact of its being titled in a way that implied something other than a portrait would have made it more saleable, and it was duly bought, for the handsome sum of 1,500 guineas, by Sir James Kitson, Bart., of Gledhow Hall, Leeds. Kitson was a wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune from the Airedale Foundry in Leeds, a major manufacturer of locomotives. He had moved into local and national politics as a Liberal, supporting Gladstone, and served as member of parliament for the Colne Valley in Yorkshire from 1892 until his elevation to the peerage as 1st Baron Airedale in 1907. The painting passed down from him to his daughter Emily Kitson; it was sold from her estate in 1961, but since the buyer was a first cousin once removed, Grosvenor Talbot Griffith, it remained in the family.

We are grateful to Dr. Malcolm Warner, Independent Art Historian, for compiling this catalogue entry.