The Ruling Passion
John Everett Millais, 1885
This interior scene shows an elderly man reclining on a chaise longue, displaying a stuffed bird, a king bird of paradise, to a group of children and a woman. The older girl on the left holds a resplendent quetzal, and other specimens lie scattered around the room. The children's reactions range from the rapt attention of the two youngest to the near boredom of the eldest.
The picture grew out of a visit Millais made, together with his son John Guille Millais, to the ornithologist John Gould shortly before Gould's death in 1881. On the way home, the painter remarked that it was a fine subject and that he would paint it when he had time. That time came several years later, and the work does not depict Gould or that particular visit. The central figure was modelled by the engraver Thomas Oldham Barlow, a friend of the artist, two others were professional models, and the two youngest children were Millais's grandchildren.
The painting was well received at the Royal Academy in 1885. The influential critic Ruskin counted it among only three things worth seeing in that exhibition.
- Painter
- John Everett Millais
- Date
- 1885
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 161 × 216 cm
- Museum
- Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow City
- Movement
- Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
- Genre
- genre art
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