Sir John Millais (from a photograph by Lewis Carroll)

Sir John Millais

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-98)

1865

Source: Collingwood, facing p. 104

Sir John Everett Millais looks up from a book, keeping the page he was looking at, as if an inspiration has just struck him. He seems entirely and delightfully unaware of the camera. [Commentary continues below.]

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"He was familiar with the work of John Everett Millais," writes Edward Wakeling (179), having seen it in exhibitions, and went along to see the artist himself one day taking a letter of introduction from his friend Holman Hunt. It was 7 April 1864, and he wrote in his diary,

I first went to 7A by mistake, and while waiting at the door noticed a gentleman who was walking up and down in front of the next house, and whom I thought like the pictures of Millais. We interchanged some remarks about the difficulty of getting the door answered. Then came some children with a governess, and I said to myself "there comes My First Sermon," but they passed the door I was at, made a rush at the gentleman (evidently their father), and went into the next house. At last I found out my mistake, and that the gentleman was Millais himself: he was very kind, and took me into his studio [...] and sent for his children — two boys and three girls. [qtd. in Wakeling 179]

Wakeling then explains that the introduction "led to a photographic session with the family in July 1865, during which Mr and Mrs Millais and two daughters were photographed" (179).

Bibliography

Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C. L. Dodgson). London: Unwin, 1898. Internet Archive. From the Fisher Walsh collection, University of Toronto. Web. 11 May 2015.

Wakeling, Edward. Lewis Carroll: The Man and His Circle. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015.

Created 11 May 2015