Van Gogh Museum features John Everett Millais Major Exhibition

Written by Franklin Overmeyer Saturday, 23 October 2010 23:56

Amsterdam, NL - John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was the foremost painter of the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Britain’s most successful artist of the latter half of the 19th century. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Tate Britain in London, comprises some 100 works and is the first monograph review since 1967 and the first exhibition since 1898 to cover all aspects of Millais’ career. On view at the Van Gogh Museum through 18 May, 2008.

John Everett Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in late 1848, together with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. This group of painters, poets and critics rejected the academism prescribed by the traditionalist Royal Academy and propagated a return to the honest simplicity in art they saw as having been lost after the Renaissance. The exhibition reveals the shifts in Millais’ style, from the most audacious ‘primitive’ and confrontational works dating from his Pre-Raphaelite period to popular nostalgic subjects including his famous society portraits and the evocative late landscapes that also charmed Vincent van Gogh.

Ophelia
One of the highlights of the exhibition is his painting of Ophelia loaned by the Tate. This work was inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet  in which Ophelia, driven insane by her beloved Hamlet’s murder of her father, drowns herself. The painting displays a subtle interplay of mystique, a highly refined technique and subdued drama.

In addition the exhibition includes many key works from private collections which have not been on public display for many years such as Sisters (1868), a portrait of the artist’s three daughters.

Refuge in beauty
  Coinciding with John Everett Millais, the Museum Mesdag in The Hague will stage the Refuge in beauty exhibition. Exploring the Pre-Raphaelite influence on Dutch artists for the first time, this exhibition features the work of Matthijs Maris, Richard Roland Holst, Jan Toorop, Antoon Derkinderen and Antoon van Welie, among others. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication. For more information, please visit www.museummesdag.nl.

Publications
To accompany the exhibition John Everett Millais a catalogue will be published in English and Dutch, Van Gogh Museum in collaboration with Tate Publishing, 112 pages, 100 illustrations. Price: € 19.95. The books will be on sale in the museum shop, via www.vangoghmuseumshop.com and in bookshops.

John Everett Millais is curated by Alison Smith, curator at Tate Britain, and Jason Rosenfeld, associate professor at New York’s Marymount Manhattan College, and made its debut at Tate Britain from 26 September 2007 to 13 January 2008.

Visit The Van Gogh Museum at : www.vangoghmuseum.nl/

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