The Return of the Dove to the Ark

The Return of the Dove to the Ark is a painting by John Everett Millais, dated 1851 and now held by the Ashmolean in Oxford as part of the Combe Bequest. It depicts a moment from the biblical story of the Flood: two of Noah's daughters-in-law tend to the dove that has come back to the Ark carrying an olive branch, a sign that the waters are beginning to recede. Millais first planned to include Noah and several animals in the background, but he dropped them, probably so he could finish in time for the Royal Academy exhibition that year. It is his second biblical subject after The Eve of St. Agnes was not, in fact, biblical; his earlier work on this theme was the Flood-themed picture, and he once considered a companion piece he never completed. When shown, some Catholic viewers read it as an allegory of the country's return to the true faith, a reading that surprised the artist. John Ruskin admired it and wished to buy it, but it had already gone to Thomas Combe, a collector of Pre-Raphaelite art. The French satirical magazine Journal pour rire parodied it in 1855 in a cartoon by Bertall.

Painter

John Everett Millais

Date

1851

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

88 × 55 cm

Museum

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Movement

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Genre

religious art

Depicts

dove, Noah's Ark, olive branch, waist-length hair, straw, standing, dress, blond hair

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