Bubbles by Sir John Everett Millais Bt PRA (1829-96)

Bubbles

Sir John Everett Millais (1829-96)

1865-66

Illustration of the original oil painting

109.2 x 78.7 cm

Now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight [click here for original]

Source: Millais, facing p.186

Used in a Pears soap advertisement, Bubbles was seen as pandering to popular taste. But art-critic Marion Spielmann leapt to its defence. [Commentary continues below.]

Scanned image and text by Jacqueline Banerjee

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"This world-famous picture, so happy in inspiration (and so keenly adopted for commercial purposes), spread over the world by the million by illustrated newspaper, print-dealer, and soap manufacturer, is a far higher class of painting than it has become the fashion to assume," claimed Spielmann, supporting his view by describing the painting of the child's head as "pure, rapid, and sweet in touch, without any torturing of the colours," and declaring that anyway it promoted a more "artistic" kind of advertisement (qtd. in Millais 186). Millais's son explained that it was never meant to be used commercially:

Millais painted it simply and solely for his own pleasure. He was very fond of his little grandson, Willie James — a singularly beautiful and most winning child — and seeing him one day blowing soap-bubbles through a pipe, he thought what a dainty picture he would make, and at once set to work to paint him, bubbles and all. Willie, then about four years of age, was delighted to sit.... Shortly afterwards Sir William Ingram came to the studio, and falling in love with the picture bought it for the Illustrated London News. Other pictures, such as Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Little Mrs. Gamp, and Cherry Ripe, had been previously disposed of in like manner, and artistically reproduced as supplements to that paper or the Graphic; and knowing that the purchasers would do justice to his work, as they had done before, Millais handed it over without any concern as to its fate, or that of the copyright that, of course, went with it. [189]

The younger Millais went on to say that his father was furious when the periodical sold his work on to the soap manufacturers, but felt a little better when he saw the designs for the advertisement. Although he seems to have had no choice in the matter, which apparently involved a "legal loophole" (Lambourne 180), the result was predictable: unsympathetic critics saw it as detrimental to both art and artist. The novelist Marie Corelli even made one of the characters in her The Sorrows of Satan (1895) say:

I am one of those who think the fame of Millais as an artist was marred when he degraded himself to the level of painting the little green boy blowing bubbles of Pears's Soap. That was an advertisement. And that very incident in his career, trifling though it seem, will prevent his ever standing on the same dignified height of distinction with such masters in art as Romney, Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough or Reynolds. [99]

Once she understood what had happened though, Corelli apologised, turning her wrath on the dealer instead, and removing the offending criticism from subsequent editions of the novel (see Millais 189). Still, the picture would always be notorious. It is, of course, typically Victorian in its sentiments about childhood, stressing the child's innocence and vulnerability as he gazes raptly at a fragile bubble, perfect, glistening and soon to vanish. Happily, however, this little boy grew up to become an Admiral (see Lambourne 180).

Related Material

John Everett Millais's Bubbles and the Commercialisation of Art

Bibliography

Corelli, Marie. The Sorrows of Satan. London: J. B. Lippincott, 1895. Internet Archive. Web. 6 April 2014.

Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting. London and New York: Phaidon, 1999.

Millais, John Guille. The Life and Letters of John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy. 2 vols. Vo. II. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1899. Internet Archive. Web. 6 April 2014.

Last modified 9 April 2014