John Everett Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in late 1848, together with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. This group of painters, poets and critics rejected the academism prescribed by the traditionalist Royal Academy and propagated a return to the honest simplicity in art they saw as having been lost after the Renaissance. The exhibition reveals the shifts in Millais’ style, from the most audacious ‘primitive’ and confrontational works dating from his Pre-Raphaelite period to popular nostalgic subjects including his famous society portraits and the evocative late landscapes that also charmed Vincent van Gogh.

Ophelia One of the highlights of the exhibition is his painting of Ophelia loaned by the Tate. This work was inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which Ophelia, driven insane by her beloved Hamlet’s murder of her father, drowns herself. The painting displays a subtle interplay of mystique, a highly refined technique and subdued drama.

Zoom in on Ophelia

In addition the exhibition includes several key works from private collections which have not been on public display for many years such as Sisters (1868), a portrait of the artist’s three daughters.

Poetry Trail
Visitors to the exhibition John Everett Millais with an mp3 player or iPod can follow an atmospheric Poetry Trail with texts and poems by, among others, Shakespeare, Keats and Tennyson.
More information and downloads.

Talks on Millais
A free introductory guided tour takes an in-depth look at the themes in Millais' work. Thursday- and Saturday afternoons at 14.00 (Dutch) and 15.00 (English).
More information.

Audio tour
An audio tour is available in English and Dutch. Price € 4.

Me, Ophelia Concurrently on show is a selection of photographs by, amongst others, Rineke Dijkstra, Hellen van Meene and Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. These works of contemporary photography display striking parallels with Millais’ oeuvre and illustrate how the influence of Millais’ famous Ophelia and other paintings still lingers on. More about Me, Ophelia.

Refuge in beauty
Coinciding with John Everett Millais, the Museum Mesdag in The Hague will stage the Refuge in beauty exhibition. Exploring the Pre-Raphaelite influence on Dutch artists for the first time, this exhibition features the work of Matthijs Maris, Richard Roland Holst, Jan Toorop, Antoon Derkinderen and Antoon van Welie, among others. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication. For more information, please visit www.museummesdag.nl.

Publications
To accompany the exhibition John Everett Millais a catalogue will be published in English and Dutch, Van Gogh Museum in collaboration with Tate Publishing, 112 pages, 100 illustrations. Price: € 19.95. Also available is Millais, Jason Rosenfeld, Alison Smith, Tate Publishing, 272 pages, 250 illustrations, in English. Price: € 39.80 (paperback),
€ 56 (hardcover) and Ik, Ophelia, Katja Rodenburg, from d’jonge Hond publishers, 80 pages, 40 illustrations, in Dutch. Price: € 19.95 (paperback). The books will be on sale in the museum shop, via www.vangoghmuseumshop.com and in bookshops.

John Everett Millais is curated by Alison Smith, curator at Tate Britain, and Jason Rosenfeld, associate professor at New York’s Marymount Manhattan College, and made its debut at Tate Britain from 26 September 2007 to 13 January 2008.