Creation and Reception
The artwork took an estimated three months to paint. Millais is reported to have paid particularly close attention to the correctness of the Brunswicker's uniform. Kate Perugini, the daughter of Charles Dickens, was used as a model for the woman seen in the picture. The male model was an anonymous soldier who died shortly afterwards. The two models never actually met. Millais' son says that they both posed with wooden props. He "clasped a lay-figure to his breast, while the fair lady leant on the bosom of a man of wood."
It was also bought for the highest price Millais had ever received from dealer and publisher Ernest Gambart—100 guineas. He sold it on to the well-known Pre-Raphaelite collector Thomas Plint. Later, in 1898, William Hesketh Lever purchased the work for his private collection.
The painting followed a period of relative lack of success for Millais, and its similarity to A Huguenot is widely interpreted as an attempt to repeat his earlier success. It was engraved in mezzotint by T.L. Atkinson in 1864. Millais also painted two watercolour copies of the composition.
Read more about this topic: The Black Brunswicker (Millais)
Famous quotes containing the words creation and, creation and/or reception:
“For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.”
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“A fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)