SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BT, P.R.A., R.W.S. (SOUTHAMPTON 1829-1896 LONDON)
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BT, P.R.A., R.W.S. (SOUTHAMPTON 1829-1896 LONDON)
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BT, P.R.A., R.W.S. (SOUTHAMPTON 1829-1896 LONDON)
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BT, P.R.A., R.W.S. (SOUTHAMPTON 1829-1896 LONDON)
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Property of a Southern Collector
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BT, P.R.A., R.W.S. (SOUTHAMPTON 1829-1896 LONDON)

Love Birds ("Une Grande Dame")

Details
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BT, P.R.A., R.W.S. (SOUTHAMPTON 1829-1896 LONDON)
Love Birds ("Une Grande Dame")
signed with the artist's monogram and dated '1883'
oil on canvas
36 5⁄8 x 25 5⁄8 in. (93 x 65.1 cm.)
Provenance
The artist.
with Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, acquired directly from the above, May 1883.
with Fletcher's of Collins Street, Melbourne, by October 1885.
with Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, by January 1887.
George Ingraham Seney (1826-1893), New York.
His sale; American Art Association, New York, 11-13 February 1891, lot 267, as The Love-bird.
Joseph Foxcroft Cole (1837–1892), Boston, acquired at the above sale.
Matthew C. D. Borden, (1842-1912), New York and Fall River, MA.
His sale; American Art Association at the Plaza Hotel, New York, 13-14 February 1913, lot 31, as The Pet Bird.
William W. Seaman (1854-c.1919), art agent, acquired at the above sale.
with the Sporting Gallery, Middleburg, VA, before 1986.
Marguerite Neel Williams (1917-1999), Thomasville, GA, acquired directly from the above, 16 February 1989.
By descent to the present owner.
Literature
Montezuma, "My Note Book", The Art Amateur, New York, August 1883, p. 46, as "Une Grande Dame".
E. A. C., "Monthly Notes: Art", Once a Month: A Magazine for Australasia, vol. 4, no. 2, Melbourne, 1 February 1886, p. 167, as The Love Birds.
M. H. Spielmann, Millais and His Works, Edinburgh and London, 1898, pp. 65, 175, no. 248, as Love Birds (originally "Une Grande Dame").
J. G. Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Millais, New York, 1899, vol. II, pp. 344-345, 348-349, 481, illustrated with the artist's photographs in 4 different states, as "Une Grand Dame" and Love Birds (Originally "Une Grande Dame").
A. L. Baldry, Sir John Everett Millais, His Art and Influence, London, 1899, pp. 58, 116, as Love Birds (erroneously catalogued as dated 1882).
W. R. Valentiner and A. F. Jaccaci, Old and Modern Masters in the Collection of M. C. D. Borden, vol. I, New York, 1911, pp. 134-135, no. 32, illustrated.
Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, 1883, no. 37, as "Une Grand Dame".
Glasgow, James McClure & Son, February-March 1885.
Melbourne, Fletcher's of Collins Street, 1885-1886.

Brought to you by

Taylor Alessio
Taylor Alessio Junior Specialist, Head of Part II

Lot Essay

Love Birds ("Une Grande Dame") is one of Sir John Everett Millais’s so-called ‘fancy pictures.’ Fancy pictures were originally a sub-genre of painting within 18th century English art. The name was coined by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, alongside Thomas Gainsborough, was one of the great practitioners of the subject. These kinds of pictures were primarily inspired by 18th-century French painting, including Chardin and Greuze. ‘Fancy pictures’ generally featured children as their subjects, and while purporting to depict everyday life, they also usually included an imaginative element which gave them a contrived innocence. The notion of a ‘childhood’ had only begun to develop in the 18th century, and thus a painting that took a contemporary child as its subject was inherently new.

Striving, late in his career, to achieve the same reputation as a painter that Reynolds had, Millais was to become the ‘fancy picture’s’ greatest practitioner among 19th century painters, and with eight children at home to choose from, the artist was rarely short of child models. Unlike their 18th century antecedents, Millais’s paintings generally take a view on childhood which is less focused on underprivileged children, though they are undercut with a sense of the fragility of life and childhood which reflected the concerns of his era about a loss of innocence among children. His paintings too tend to be portrait-like studies of single children in settings or costumes gently suggestive of narrative but without actually providing a specific story or message, and they are conspicuously nostalgic – as for example in the brocade silk dress and lace cap and collar of the sitter in the current painting, which harken back to the 18th century rather than his own time.

Long dismissed as simple Victorian sentimentality, Millais’s ‘fancy pictures’ are in fact best described by Alison Smith who noted, ‘In taking a genre widely considered to have degenerated into something trite and feminine, Millais sought to aggrandize it by imbuing his child subjects with a prescience of mortality but with the aim of giving visual pleasure rather than preaching a moral lesson.’ Emblems of the fragility of existence – bubbles, flowers, and, as in the present picture, birds, appear frequently in his work, and his children’s neutral and sometimes introspective expressions were crucial in keeping both narrative and moralizing at bay. Though at first blush it appears to be simply a sweet painting of a child holding a love bird (a type of small parrot), in fact Millais was quoting directly from the Old Masters in creating the present picture – the pose was said to have been inspired by the work attributed to the school of Philippe de Champaigne in the Louvre, Enfant au faucon – an attempt to monumentalize and elevate his subject matter.

The picture was included in two very important late 19th- and early 20th-century American collections – that of George Ingraham Seney, an early donor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Matthew C. D. Borden, a Fall River cloth industrialist known as the ‘The Calico King’ during his lifetime. Prior to Seney’s acquisition, it was shipped to Australia, where it was considered for acquisition by The National Gallery of Victoria only a few years after being painted. In spite of Millais’s concerted attempts to avoid sentimentality and narrative, in a delightful twist of perhaps nominative determinist fate, this work titled Love Birds has been sold on three separate occasions within a day or two of Valentine’s Day.

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