The Vale of Rest

The Vale of Rest, painted by John Everett Millais in 1858 and later reworked, shows two Catholic nuns in a walled graveyard as evening falls. In the foreground, a novice digs a grave with a spade while the other, seated on a tombstone, watches over the work with a rosary in her clasped hands, from which hang a cross and a small skull. That skull points to the memento mori, the reminder that death awaits everyone, although the overall mood conveys calm rather than anguish. Beyond the wall, poplars and a chapel bell stand out against a twilight sky. Its origins are linked to Millais's honeymoon trip to Scotland, and its title comes from a Mendelssohn song. The painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1859, where it drew harsh criticism, partly for its Catholic subject in Anglican England; over time it came to be regarded as one of its author's finest achievements. Its deliberate ambiguity, with open questions about who is being buried and what bond links the two women, keeps it intriguing.

Painter

John Everett Millais

Date

1858

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

103 × 173 cm

Museum

Tate, London

Movement

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Genre

genre art

Depicts

convent, nun, funeral, churchyard, burial, gravedigger

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