Happy Springtime

Sir John Everett Millais Bt PRA (1829-96)

Early 1860s

Etching on paper, signed with monogram and dated 1860 on the plate.

6 1/2 x 3 15/16 inches, 9 x 10 cm.

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Commentary by Hilary Morgan

Millais was a central figure in the flowering of British illustration in the 1860s. He contributed no fewer than eighteen designs to Moxon's edition of Tennyson's Poems (1857), the seminal book for the movement, and went on to illustrate five novels by Trollope, and to illustrate and contribute illustrations to numerous other books and magazines in the period before 1870. These illustrations were of course drawn by the artist on woodblocks and cut by engravers. In the same period Millais was also briefly interested in making original prints as illustrations, and became a member of both the Etching Club and the Junior Etching Club*. These institutions published books in which the prints often illustrated poetic extracts, and the present work was probably destined for such a volume, although it has not been possible to identify it. It might be compared to Millais's etching, 'Summer Indolence', (1862) based on a figure in the artist's 'Spring' (Royal Academy 1859, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) which appeared in the junior Etching Club's Passages from Modern English Poets (Day and Son, London 1862). The subject of mother and child in 'Happy Springtime', with its emotional appeal, looks forward to the popular paintings of Millais's later period, for instance the 'Nest' (Royal Academy 1887, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), which duplicates the subject, although it shows the figures half length and in eighteenth century dress.

* The Etching Club was founded in 1838 and closed in 1885. TheJunior Etching Club, whose members included Whistler, Smallfield and John Wright Oakes, existed between 1857 and 1864. These institutions have been studied in W. Shaw Sparrow's A Book of British Etching (1926).

Bibliography

Morgan, Hilary, and Peter Nahum. Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum, 1989. Catalogue number 15.

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Last modified 21 December 2001