John Everett Millais's Nine Shakespeare Paintings: From Othello to Portia

Key facts

• John Everett Millais was born in 1829 in Southampton, UK, and became the youngest student at the Royal Academy Schools at age 11.
• The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti at Millais's family home on Gower Street, London.
• Millais's earliest Shakespeare painting, Othello and Desdemona (c. 1843), was completed when he was 14 and is held in the National Trust Collections, Oxfordshire.
• Ophelia (1851–1852) was painted on location by the Hogsmill River at Ewell, Surrey, with Elizabeth Siddal posing in a bath; it was part of the Henry Tate Gift in 1894.
• Ferdinand and Ariel (1850) was Millais's first plein air painting, rejected by its patron because the bats were considered too grotesque.
• The Princes in the Tower (1878) is in the Royal Holloway Collection, London, and Millais's son John Guille Millais made sketches of the Bloody Tower for its background.
• Portia (1886) is in The Met, New York, and the red dress was loaned by Ellen Terry, with Kate Dolan as the model.
• Millais's Shakespeare paintings are held in institutions including Tate, Manchester Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.