A Painting that Awakens the Senses

Reading “The Blind Girl” by John Everett Millais

The Blind Girl (1856) by John Everett Millais. Oil on canvas. 82.5 x 61.6 cm. City Art Gallery,
Birmingham, UK. Image source Birmingham Museums Trust (open access)

Two girls are huddled beneath a shawl as a storm passes overhead. The luminosity of the colours
tells us that the sun has returned, brightening the hillside, bathing everything in a fresh light.

Perched on the bank of a stream, the two girls wait for the final few drops of rain to slip by.
Their attention is occupied with the wetness of the grass, the warmth of the sun and a new clarity
in the air.

Detail of ‘The Blind Girl’ (1856) by John Everett Millais. Oil on canvas. 82.5 x 61.6 cm. City
Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Image source Birmingham Museums Trust (open access)

Look a little closer and you’ll notice that one of the girls is blind. Around her neck she wears a
small handwritten note that reads “Pity the blind”.

Judging from the ragged state of their clothes, she and her sister are homeless and must beg for
sustenance by playing a concertina — the musical instrument on her lap.

The older sister has lost her eyesight, yet the artist is prompting us to consider her heightened
sensitivity. She feels sunlight on her face whilst she fingers the blades of grass beside her. And
the concertina not only tells us that she performs for money but also that all her other senses are
flourishing.
Detail of ‘The Blind Girl’ (1856) by John Everett Millais. Oil on canvas. 82.5 x 61.6 cm. City
Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Image source Birmingham Museums Trust (open access)

The whole scene is radiant and intense: the copper coloured hair of the girl, her pink cheeks, the
golden-blond of her inquisitive sister, the double rainbow, the small tortoiseshell butterfly on her
shoulder.

But here’s the question: how are we supposed to feel about a blind girl who is surrounded by so
much colour and light but who cannot see it herself?

A perfect thing
Contemporaries of John Everett Millais praised the work. Friend and fellow member of the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters, Dante Gabriel Rosetti said the painting was “one of the most
touching and perfect things I know”.

It is a painting that does its work gently. It doesn’t insist. With its fusion of figure and landscape,
the image beckons the viewer to experience the setting first and foremost. In such a way, it
engages the viewer’s senses, just as the girls’ senses are occupied.

Take a moment to look at the colouration of the scene and where the shadows fall. Millais got it
right. Even though the paintwork is applied in a rough layering of visible dabs and smudges, the
clarity of the light and tone is utterly persuasive.
Detail of ‘The Blind Girl’ (1856) by John Everett Millais. Oil on canvas. 82.5 x 61.6 cm. City
Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Image source Birmingham Museums Trust (open access)

Notice the way the sunlight contrasts against the passing grey of the storm, for instance; you can
almost feel the faint touch of a wet breeze or hear the sound of the crows ranging over the grass
in search of freshly woken grubs.
Detail of ‘The Blind Girl’ (1856) by John Everett Millais. Oil on canvas. 82.5 x 61.6 cm. City
Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Image source Birmingham Museums Trust (open access)

Or look at the fabric of the girls’ skirts. The paint here is veritably scratched on in thin layers.
Millais has used a lighter undertone — probably just the white background of the primed canvas
— and painted the fox-orange and purple tones on top so that the white partially shows through.

A heightened reality
Millais began making the image in the autumn of 1854 whilst on a visit to Winchelsea in Sussex
— the small town that can be seen in the background. The model for the blind girl was Mathilda
Proudfoot, replacing Effie Grey (Millais’ wife) who was first used as the model, and Isabella
Nicol as her sister. After it was finished, the painting won the annual award at the Liverpool
Academy in 1857.

It took Millais two years to complete the work, during which he made a particular effort to
capture the tones and textures of the landscape with heightened effect. Even the double rainbow
is technically correct. In fact, when he showed the painting for the first time, somebody noticed
he had painted the two rainbows with their colours in the same order, whereas with double
rainbows the colours of the inner rainbow are inverted. Millais duly corrected his mistake.
The Blind Girl (1856) by John Everett Millais. Oil on canvas. 82.5 x 61.6 cm. City Art Gallery,
Birmingham, UK. Image source Birmingham Museums Trust (open access)

With its arresting colour scheme and strong emotional impact, this is a morally charged painting.
Yet the two peasant girls do not look for our sympathy; we must give it to them voluntarily.

It is also a hopeful work. As the storm clouds pass over and the sunlight returns to the landscape,
the presence of the rainbow suggests hope for the two peasant girls whose material life is clearly
difficult.

The very soul of the artist

For the Pre-Raphaelite painters, the aim of art was to paint honestly and truthfully, “to exhibit the
very soul of the artist” as fellow Pre-Raphaelite Dante Rossetti put it.

They felt that art had entered a disastrous decline with the High Renaissance, a time when artists
pursued “fame or self-display” through a more calculated type of beauty, resulting in “cold
symbolism and abstract impersonation”. Their archetypal offender was Raphael — hence their
name “Pre-Raphaelites”, which was meant to conjure a time before the rational order of the later
Renaissance.

For Millais, these principles translated into images that recorded faithfully the textures and
colours of nature, to offer a direct and emotionally true representation of the world — with
virtuous feeling at their heart.

Millais once compared his art to a sermon. Yet for Millais, as he expressed, his art had the
advantage of being “put before the spectator without the trouble of realisation often lost in the
effort of reading or listening.”

For Millais, the artist was in a position to guide humankind: to teach, to uplift and to spiritually
mentor through painting.