Sophie Gray was the artist’s sister-in-law and one of his favourite models in the 1850s. She appears in his 1850s masterpiece, Autumn Leaves (1856), among other pictures. The present portrait, which relates closely to that work, was painted in the summer and autumn of 1857, when Millais and Effie were living with her parents and sisters at Bowerswell, the Gray family home in Perth. This extremely rare and important Pre-Raphaelite painting, dating from the height of the movement, is a pendant to a similar head of Sophie’s younger sister Alice, another of his favourite models, painted on the same scale. Both works were bought from Millais by his friend, the Pre-Raphaelite landscape and figurative artist, George Price Boyce, for himself and on behalf of his sister Joanna, also an artist. However, there is a distinct difference between the two portraits. The painting of Alice, the youngest sister, is a straightforward portrait of an immature girl. The portrait of Sophie, on the other hand, is alive with an electric energy between the sitter and the artist. There can be little doubt that if the 28 year old Millais had not been deeply in love with his new wife, Effie, where his affections would have been bestowed. This is a very personal painting. Women of this period were not portrayed in a confrontational manner, which was unacceptable to Victorian Society. Sophie displays a direct, intimate self-confidence, creating an image far more familiar to 20th century eyes than those of her day. The Millais heads that George and Joanna Boyce owned clearly influenced the small, decorative female heads that they themselves painted. G. P. Boyce had a particular taste for beautiful women and, in 1859, commissioned D. G. Rossetti’s landmark ‘stunner’ painting Bocca Baciata (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). G. P. Boyce seems to have been keen to show Sophie and Alice at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1858, but Millais was unwilling, writing to him on 29th March that year: It is true enough what you have heard about my not sending my large picture [Spring], and as this is the case I think it better not to send anything at all this year, so I will not ask the loan of the two heads this year. I daresay you will readily understand it is better not to appear in the catalogue, than only to exhibit small works. Although neither head was shown at the Royal Academy, it seems likely that one of them was the Portrait of a Young Lady shown at the Liverpool Academy later in 1858. In the catalogues of the exhibitions in which the two heads appeared between 1898 and 1923, that of Sophie is misidentified as Alice and vice versa.
George Price Boyce, bought from the artist on the 25th November 1857 for 60 guineas; his sale: Christie’s, 2nd July 1897, number 208; sold to: Mrs Ernest Charrington, later Mrs Wilfrid Hadley for 70 guineas; By descent in the family to 2000
Possibly, Liverpool Academy, Annual Exhibition, 1858, number 600 London, Royal Academy, Collected Works by the Late J. E. Millais, Winter Exhibition, 1898, number 28 (the property of Mrs Wilfrid Hadley) London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1898, number 133 London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, British Art Fifty Years Ago, 1905, number 403 London, Tate Gallery, Paintings and Drawings of the 1860s Period 1858, 1923, number 84
M. H. Spielmann, Millais And His Works with special reference to the Exhibition at the Royal Academy 1898, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London 1898, page 169, catalogue number 50 J. G. Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John E. Millais, Methuen & Co. 1900, volume II, page 469 (identified as Alice, the sister sitters are confused) Virginia Surtees, The Diaries of George Price Boyce, Real World, 1980, page 19: November 25: Brought away Millais’ head of his wife’s sister, paying £63 for it. Paul Spencer-Longhurst, The Blue Bower, Rossetti in the 1860s, Scala Publishers, 2000, page 36