In Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, the resourceful heroine Portia disguises herself in lawyer’s robes. Her intention is to outwit the moneylender Shylock in court and prevent him from extracting the cruel and unreasonable loan penalty of a “pound of flesh.” Millais depicted model Kate Dolan in the costume worn by famed actress Ellen Terry in her incarnation of the role. X-rays and traces of earlier brushwork indicate that underneath the composition is a study of the same figure in ancient Greek dress. Millais painted this picture forty years into a career that saw him develop from an artistic firebrand into one of Britain’s most eminent painters.
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Fig. 1. Rupert Potter, photograph of Sir John Everett Millais's "Study of a Girl in Greek Dress. 1886". From John Guille Millais, "The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais" (New York, 1899), vol. 2, p. 193.
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Fig. 2. Rupert Potter, photograph of Sir John Everett Millais's "Head of 'Portia.' 1886". From John Guille Millais, "The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais" (New York, 1899), vol. 2, p. 197.
Fig. 3. Detail of X-radiograph
Artwork Details
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Title:Portia
Artist:Sir John Everett Millais (British, Southampton 1829–1896 London)
A founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, created a baronet in 1885, and elected president of the Royal Academy in 1896, Millais was enormously successful, and died wealthy and honored, but his reputation did not long survive him.
In his biography of his father, J. G. Millais reproduced a photograph of the incomplete and long unlocated Study of a Girl in Greek Dress (see fig. 1 above). It appeared opposite text relating to the year 1885, in which the author described how the artist came to hire a Miss Dolan as the model for "one of Shakespeare’s heroines that he intended to paint." The picture is also recorded in a photograph of 1885 by Rupert Potter of Millais seated in his London studio. Several pages on, J. G. Millais illustrated a striking sketch of a head, evidently the same person but in a different costume (fig. 2), titling it, with reference to the heroine of The Merchant of Venice, "Head of ‘Portia.’" The confusion arising from the existence of the three disparate photographs was finally put to rest in 1977, when Malcolm Warner proposed that they must all represent earlier stages of The Met’s picture, indications of which would likely be revealed by an x-radiograph. This proved to be the case (fig. 3).
It had been suggested in the November 6, 1886, issue of the Athenaeum that Portia had been "mainly studied from" the American actress Mary Anderson, who, however, as Lucy Oakley (1981) pointed out, was touring in the United States from September 1885 until June 1886, during most of the period when the picture was painted. Anderson never played Portia, but she had acted in various roles that called for classical costume of the sort depicted in the earlier stages of the picture. On August 2, 1886, Ronald Sutherland Gower (1902) had called on Millais in his studio and had seen Portia "in Ellen Terry’s red dress in that part, but not a portrait of that actress." That this information is correct is confirmed by any number of images of Terry as Portia, for example, G. W. Baldry’s 1883 portrait (Garrick Club, London). If the picture represented Anderson, Terry, or one of Millais’s daughters, as has been claimed, the artist or J. G. Millais would undoubtedly have said so, which leaves us with the fact that the latter instead mentioned the model Miss Dolan, whose first name is recorded elsewhere as Kate. The young woman reportedly sat for Leighton as well, and later for Burne-Jones.
Millais shows a woman of commanding stature. The velvety, sonorous shades of red and persimmon impart warmth and intimacy, while the verticals provided by the costume contribute to the gravity of her presence. However, as Oakley (1981) observed, the fact that the artist "could transform the Girl in Greek Dress into Portia merely by changing her clothes underlines his fundamental lack of interest in the narrative possibilities of the subjects."
[2012; adapted from Baetjer 2009]
Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): JEM [monogram] / 1886
?[Thomas McLean, London, from 1886]; Walter Clifford Weblyn (from 1887; bought for 2,000 gns.); James Staats Forbes, London (by 1888–d. 1904; his estate, 1904–5; sold through Grafton Galleries for £1,200 to Agnew); [Agnew, London, 1905–6; sold to The Met]
London. T. M'Lean's Gallery. "Oil Paintings . . . of the British and Foreign Schools," 1886, no. 29 (as "Portia, 'A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel!'").
London. Whitechapel [St. Jude's School House]. "Fine Art Loan Exhibition," March 20–April 8, 1888, no. 23 (lent by J. S. Forbes).
London. Grafton Galleries. "A Selection of Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of the late James Staats Forbes," 1905, no. 287.
New York. Wildenstein. "Stars of Yesterday and Today," March 7–April 4, 1944, no. 89 (as "Ellen Terry as Portia").
Richmond. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. "The Tastemakers," January 18–February 24, 1957, no catalogue.
Indianapolis. Herron Museum of Art. "The Pre-Raphaelites," February 16–March 22, 1964, no. 53.
New York. Gallery of Modern Art. "The Pre-Raphaelites," April 27–May 31, 1964, no. 53.
Palm Beach. Society of the Four Arts. "English Paintings of the Victorian Era," February 5–27, 1966, no. 21.
Coral Gables, Fla. Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery of the University of Miami. "The Revolt of the Pre-Raphaelites," March 5–April 9, 1972, no. 63.
Ellen Terry. Letter to Sir John Millais. March 30, 1886, writes "Of course I will lend you the dress [presumably the dress worn in the picture, see Ref. Oakley 1981, pp. 183–84, fig. 2] (here it is.) or anything in the world that I possess, that could be of the very smallest service to you".
[F. G. Stephens]. "Fine-Art Gossip." Athenæum no. 3065 (July 24, 1886), p. 122, states that the picture of Portia in the costume of "an Italian advocate" is "not quite finished," and that it is "probably destined for next year's Academy".
[F. G. Stephens]. "Minor Exhibitions." Athenæum no. 3080 (November 6, 1886), p. 606, reviewing the McLean's exhibition, states that Millais's "figure [of Portia] is mainly studied from Miss Mary Anderson" and observes that "she does not look in the least like a Daniel come to judgment".
"Art Note." The Star (September 22, 1887) [p. 2], states that Walter Weblyn bought the picture for 2,000 guineas and intends to include a color reproduction of it in the Christmas number of "The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News," of which he is proprietor.
"Gossip from the 'World'." Birmingham Daily Post (October 10, 1888), p. 7, states that "Encouraged by the phenomenal success of 'Portia,' Mr. Walter Weblyn has secured the copyright of 'Punchinella,' one of Sir John Millais's most recent works, for the coming Christmas number of the 'Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News'.
M. H. Spielmann. Millais and His Works. Edinburgh, 1898, p. 176, no. 283.
John Guille Millais. The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais. New York, 1899, vol. 2, pp. 192, 483, discusses the selection of "Miss Dolan, a favourite model of Lord Leighton's" as the model for the painting of a Shakespearean heroine; reproduces (opposite p. 192) a three-quarter-length 1886 oil sketch in which the model's pose is nearly identical to that in this picture but in which she wears a Greek dress, and (following p. 196) an 1886 bust of the same model, called Portia, and wearing the high-collared robe.
Ronald Sutherland Gower. Old Diaries, 1881–1901. New York, 1902, p. 48, writes that he saw in Millais's studio on August 2, 1886, "a 'Portia,' in Ellen Terry's red dress in that part, but not a portrait of that actress".
[Roger Fry]. "The Grafton Gallery." Athenæum no. 4048 (May 27, 1905), p. 664, reviewing the exhibition of the Forbes estate at the Grafton Gallery, observes that Portia shows "lamentable" proof "of the destructive effects of popularity".
Ellen Terry. "My First Appearance in America." McClure's Magazine 31 (June 1908), ill. p. 128, as "Ellen Terry as Portia".
Bryson Burroughs. Catalogue of Paintings. 1st ed. New York, 1914, p. 183, no. M61–1, as Ellen Terry in the part of the heroine of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice".
Augustin Rischgitz. Letter. April 24, 1916, informs the Museum that his aunt, Ellen Terry, lent Millais her dress but is not represented in the picture.
Mabel Terry Lewis. Letter to the director. January 16, 1927, writes that her aunt, Ellen Terry, lent Millais the dress she wore in the "Merchant of Venice" but that the model was one of his daughters.
Ralph H. Graves. Letter to Winifred Howe. December 6, 1927, informs the Museum that Millais's son, writing for the family, asserts that the sitter is a Miss Donovan.
Art News 43 (March 1–14, 1944), ill. p. 11.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 68, mistakenly give the accession number as 06.1238.
Richard Ormond. Letter to Monroe H. Fabian. January 8, 1971, believes that the sitter was one of Millais's daughters, a model, or the actress Mary Anderson, but in any event not Ellen Terry.
Malcolm Warner. Letter to Lucy Oakley. June 27, 1977, notes that none of Millais's daughters looked remotely like Portia; suggests that x-rays might reveal the studies Millais's son published in 1899.
Lucy Oakley. "The Evolution of Sir John Everett Millais's Portia." Metropolitan Museum Journal 16 (1981), pp. 181–94, fig. 1, traces the history of the picture from its conception in 1885 as a woman in a Greek dress, probably inspired by the American actress Mary Anderson, to a Shakespearean subject in which the model, presumably Miss Dolan, wears one of Ellen Terry's Portia costumes from the "Merchant of Venice".
Carolyn Merlo. "John Everett Millais and the Shakespearean Scene." Gazette des beaux-arts 104 (September 1984), pp. 82–85 nn. 13, 14, fig. 3.
John Pope-Hennessy. "Roger Fry and The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Oxford, China, and Italy: Writings in Honour of Sir Harold Acton on his Eightieth Birthday. Ed. Edward Chaney and Neil Ritchie. London, 1984, p. 235.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 209, ill.
Andrew Sanders. "Millais and Literature." John Everett Millais: Beyond the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Ed. Debra N. Mancoff. Studies in British Art, Vol. 7, New Haven, 2001, pp. 76–77, colorpl. XV, discusses the picture as a portrait of a "new woman" of the 1880s in a "historically referential" lawyer's gown.
Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009, pp. 280–83, no. 134, ill. (color).
Caroline Elam. Roger Fry and Italian Art. London, 2019, p. 66 n. 89.
After Sir John Everett Millais (British, Southampton 1829–1896 London)
1877–87
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