THE ROMANCE OF A PICTURE.

Mt Benger Mail, Volume 17, Issue 850, 22 August 1896, Page 4

THE ROMANCE OF A PICTURE.

The 'New York World' recently told the story of how Ruekin gave up his wife to Millais, the late president of the Royal Academy. To few men has come the success that Sir John Millais, R.yal Academician, has attained. And once again is revived the well-nigh forgot story of how John Ruskiu, England's great critic, gave his own beautiful wife to the young artist who, while painting her face, fell in love with her and was loved hi return. It is her exquisitely lovely face that is i ictured in Millais 8 most widely-known canvas, 'The Hugueuot Lover.' The other face, that of the man about whose arms she tie 3 the "broidered 'kerchief," is the idealised face of the paiuter himsslf.

If you should step into Sir John Millais' suburb house in South Kensington, London, a house that he has built himself—and it is not only superb architecturally, but filled with fine examples of modern art in canvases as well as furniture and decorations, for Millais' wealth has been for years very large—you would not recognise in the matron of this great household a typical British wife, her hair silvered, her form roumL and the mother of many daughters, the dainty, clinging figure of the maiden in the picture. Yet they are one and the same. The then plain John Everett Millais, boy artist, but even at that time the wielder of a pen of genius, painted her as she then was, faithfully, with every line of her sweet face told in the colored pigments. From that hour he fell in love with her, though she was another man's wife. The other man was no one else than the even at that time famous John Ruskin. An anchorite always, a hermit among his books, this art philosopher was in no wise fitted for a married life, and least of all to be wedded to the sympa« thetic, affectionate little English woman who found in him only a gloomy, moody savant, irresponsive to her caresses. Tositig at first for Millais as a diversion, she found numberless attractions in the clever youpg fellow of the world, and if Buskin had not suddenly awakened to the fact that his wife bad begun to love elsewhere there would have been a broken heart and a spoiled life. But the moody philosopher knew how to bear defeat, and, besides, so engrossed was he in all his absorbing studies that a wife did not matter much to him. With hardly a moment s hesitation, once he was aware that the woman really cared for Millais and couid be happy with him, he handed her over literally to his friend. " If you love her she is yours " the great critic is reported to have generously said. A formal divorce was pushed, through the WUrta as rapidly m possible, and as

soon as it was granted Mrs Buskin became Mrs John Millais. Without a single pang of regret the author of ' Modern Painters' turned back to his book and left the young couple to make their way, a way that was now assured. And a very happy marriage it proved. A family soon sprang up under the Millais rooftree, and John Everett Millais grew more and moro prosperous every year. He always has attributed his success in life to this romance of his boyhood, and the fact that his wife, even though she was not his then, stood in the centre of the little canvas that has since become so renowned. It is interesting to know that the exact size of this picture, now in a private gallery in the town of Preston, England, is 3ft 2in x 2ft lin, and that Millais got £l5O for it, £SO more being afterwards added by the purchaser, a picture-dealer, after the engraving made from it by the celebrated engraver, T. O. Barlow, had Bcored a great success and made much money. The value of the original canvas to day would probably be thousands.