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The Black Brunswicker

Artist: Millais, John Everett, Sir, PRA HRSA · 1829-1896 Artist: Millais, William Henry · 1828-1899

the painting is Millais' second version of the subject, the primus copy being that in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight on Merseyside. The RSA copy was completed during Millais' lifetime by his brother William Henry Millais.

"Possibly the only same-scale replica that Millais ever painted. On 3 May 1860, with the original picture at the Royal Academy exhibition, he wrote to his wife: ‘I am to paint a duplicate the same size directly it comes from the Academy’ (Millais 1899, 1, p. 357). The work seems to have been commissioned by Gambart after buying the original picture. He told his wife on 6 June: ‘Gambart . . . wants the duplicate of the Brunswickers commenced immediately after the Exhibition’, and on 7 August: ‘I am afraid this copying business will be more troublesome than I expected but in consequence of my not knowing the time it will take me I have not made any arrangements about price’ (Morgan Library, Millais Papers).

Acc to Townsend et al. 2004, p. 51, the ground of the original painting is covered with a grid of drawing lines, 1 cm apart, with pinholes at each end as if strings had been stretched across the surface at some point. Pinholes could be part of copying process for RSA replica--but lines on the ground?

On 8 August, writing from Kingston, he reported that he was being helped with the copy by his brother William (Morgan Library, Millais Papers); on 17 August: ‘I am sick of hearing of everybody going to his shooting. No one would enjoy it more than I, instead of having to stick to this beastly copying’ (Millais 1899, 1, p. 362); and on 24 August that the copy was still under way (Morgan Library, Millais Papers). For Gambart and still in progress 22 October 1860 (Manchester Guardian, p. 4). John Guille Millais noted that it was ‘never quite finished’ (1899, 1, p. 355n.).

In a letter to the present author of 25 October 1977, the artist’s granddaughter Perrine Moncreiff recalled her mother’s having [the present work], ‘which she received as a wedding present’; she had no idea of its current whereabouts.

Further references: Millais 1899, 1, p. 354; 2, p. 470; Warner 1985, p. 488 (no. 590)" [information in an e-mail from Millais' biographer Malcolm Warner to Robin H. Rodger, RSA Documentation Officer, 2022-05-24]

see above