Portrait of Effie Gray is an 1873 painting by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais. The work is located in the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland.
Analysis of Millais’s Portrait of Effie Gray
Here Millais portrays in Portrait of Effie Gray, his now-wife with great dignity seated in a cushioned chair holding a magazine.
Effie Gray, Millais’ wife, was formerly the wife of Victorian art critic John Ruskin. However, the previous marriage was not consummated and Effie, an author, and artist in her own right took up with Millais which caused a social scandal in England at the time.
Millais glories in the various textures of Effie’s dress, in the rich wine-colored velvet and the delicately painted lace around her wrists. The portrait is three-quarters in length and focuses also on the sitter’s mood – perhaps momentarily distracted by us from her musing as her head turns from the plane of her body towards us.