The Order of Release, 1746, was painted by John Everett Millais in 1853. The model for the woman, holding her child and looking into the distance with a look of divine resignation, was the wife of prominent author and art critic, John Ruskin. Her name was Euphemia Gray- commonly known as Effie.
Effie was pretty, bubbly, beautiful young woman. Married to John Ruskin- who was ten years her senior- in 1848, she was to suffer private humiliation when, on their wedding night, he refused to take her as his wife. For nearly six years, she would suffer silently, treated more as a friend and often as mentally unstable by her husband and his family rather than as a wife.
In 1852, following the extreme success of his Ophelia, John Millais caught the attention of John Ruskin. Ruskin and Millais, as well as creating a mentor-artist relationship, also became close friends, which invariably brought Millais into contact with the now-despondent Effie. To say Millais loved at her at first sight is perhaps an understatement, for they had, in fact, met several years earlier at a ball and Millais had had the audacity to ask to be introduced to her. Then Effie had declined, but now it was different.
Ruskin, with unknown intentions, suggested that Effie model for Millais’ latest work, The Order of Release, a painting about the Jacobite revolution that would feature a mother, with her child, who had recently bailed her Scottish husband from prison. For a woman of Effie’s social status to model was unheard of, but Effie- perhaps because she had nothing else to do- agreed. This was the start of a relationship between her and Millais that would become one of the most shocking, scandalous and most beloved love stories in history.
When The Order of Release was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853, it was the first painting in the history of the RA that needed a guard to keep people from getting too close.
The Artist John Everett Millias, his wife Euphemia ‘Effie” Gray, and two of their daughters, Effie (left) and Mary, photographed by Lewis Carroll.
John Everett Millais, Effie Gray & John Ruskin:
One of the Most Epic Love Triangles of the Victorian Era
Effie Gray was born in Perth, Scotland, and lived in Bowerswell, the house where Ruskin’s grandfather had committed suicide. Her family knew Ruskin’s father, who encouraged a match between them. Ruskin wrote the fantasy novel The King of the Golden River for her in 1841, when she was twelve years old. After their marriage in 1848, they travelled to Venice where Ruskin was researching his book The Stones of Venice. However, their different temperaments soon caused problems as she was naturally outgoing and flirtatious, coming to feel oppressed by her husband’s dogmatic personality.
When she met Millais five years later, she was still a virgin, as Ruskin had persistently put off consummating the marriage. His reasons are unclear, but they involved disgust with some aspect of her body. As she later wrote to her father, “He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason… that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April.” Ruskin confirmed this in his statement to his lawyer during the annulment proceedings: “It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked it." The reason for Ruskin’s disgust with "circumstances in her person” is unknown.
While married to Ruskin, she modelled for Millais’ painting The Order of Release, in which she was depicted as the loyal wife of a Scottish rebel who has secured his release from prison. She then became close to Millais when he accompanied the couple on a trip to Scotland in order to paint Ruskin’s portrait according to the critic’s artistic principles. During this time, spent in Brig o’ Turk in the Trossachs, they fell in love. She left Ruskin and, with the support of her family and a number of influential friends, filed for an annulment, causing a major public scandal; their marriage was annulled in 1854.
After his marriage, Millais began to paint in a broader style, which Ruskin condemned as a “catastrophe”. Marriage had given him a large family to support, and it is claimed that his wife encouraged him to churn out popular works for financial gain and to maintain her busy social life. However, there is no evidence that she consciously pressured him to do so, though she was an effective manager of his career and often collaborated with him in choosing subjects. Her journal indicates her high regard for her husband’s art, and his works are still recognisably Pre-Raphaelite in style several years after his marriage.
In 1855, she married John Millais and eventually bore him eight children: Everett, born in 1856; George, born in 1857; Effie, born in 1858; Mary, born in 1860; Alice, born in 1862; Geoffroy, born in 1863; John in 1865; and Sophie in 1868. Their youngest son John Guille Millais was a notable bird artist and gardener. She also modelled for a number of her husband’s works, notably Peace Concluded (1856), which idealises her as an icon of beauty and fertility.
When Ruskin later sought to become engaged to a teenage girl, Rose La Touche, Rose’s parents were concerned. They wrote to Gray to ask about the marriage; she replied by describing Ruskin as an oppressive husband. The engagement was broken off. [x]