A PRECOCIOUS PAINTER.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 308, 3 October 1929, Page 1

A PRECOCIOUS PAINTER.

BOY WHO BIT HIS MASTER. Madam, it is your duty to bring your son up as an artist—the vocation for which Nature has undoubtedly intended him.” Thus said the president of the Royal Academy, Sir Martin Arthur Shoe, after seeing the drawings of the little golden curly-headed boy of nine, who had travelled to London from Jersey for the momentous interview. Little Millais’s drawing master, after giving the child two years’ instruction, had declared to his parents that he could teach the child no more; such v/as the precocity and spontaneity of the child* work.

Millais was devoted to his mother, who undertook the greater part of his early education. He hattd restrictions of any kind, and what ho would not do out of love he would not do at all. When he was sent to school he rebelled against the dull methods of teaching and was thrashed for disobedience, whereupon he turned quickly and bit his master’s hand, relates Gladys Storey in the “ Daily Mail.” For this irregularity he was promptly expelled—much to the boy’s delight, for it meant the resumption of his mother’s tuition.

Following the advice of the president of the Royal Academy, little Millais drew from the casts in the British Museum and for two years attended a preparatory art school in B’oombury. While there he carried off the silver medal of the Society of Arts for a large pencil drawing, “The Battle of Bannockburn.”

At the age of eleven he became the youngest student ever admitted to the Royal Academy schools. During his six years* instruction there he gained all the honours awarded by that in*ti tution. His first picture to be exhibited at the Academy—at the age of 17 —was ** Pizarro Seizinf the Inca of Peru.”

I Yet, despite his generous and unceasing work and numerous successes, he was to pass through a period of struggle, hardship, and neglect, aggravated by scorn and derision from his critics. And he was glad to accept ten shillings each for pencil portrait heads and from £2 to £3 apiece for those executed in o ls. (In later years his prices for portraits ranged from £ISOO to £2000.) Mallais was not only a great artist, but a great man, “ a large-headed, lovable fellow,” who was admired by all who knew him, so full of fun and humour was he, ready always to appreciate and praise the work of others, modest in the estimation of his own. The briefness of his presidency of the Academy, cut short by his sad and painful death at the age of 67, was a great grief not only to his friends but also to thousands of art lovers of the day.