SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, P.R.A. | REVERIE

By descent through the artist's family until 2017;

Bonhams, London, 27 September 2017, lot 43;

Private collection

John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, Vol.II, London, 1899, p.421, illustrated p.423

This is the only drawing made by Millais for an uncompleted collaborative project with Alfred Lord Tennyson and the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Millais' son recounted a conversation with Sullivan; 'It had long been my desire and ambition to do a work which should combine the three sister Arts, poetry, painting and music; and this idea I imparted to Tennyson and Millais. They both fell in with the notion, and Tennyson for this purpose wrote the little cycle of songs called The Window, or the Songs of the Wrens. These I set to music and Millais began the illustrations; each song was to have its accompanying picture.' (John Guille Millais, The life and letters of Sir John Everett Millais, Vol. II, London, 1899, p. 421) Sullivan described the present drawing; 'It was a lovely drawing of a girl at a window, birds flying around and 'vine and eglantine' trailing about it.' (ibid Millais, p.421).