John Guille Millais

John Guille Millais
Known for	Painting, Sculpture, Ornithology, Gardening,
Notable work	Natural History of British Feeding Ducks; Mammals of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Biography of John Everett Millais.
Awards	Fellow of the Zoological Society (FZS)

John Guille Millais (1865 – 1931) known as Johnny Millais was an English travel writer,gardener, artist and naturalist who specialised in ornithology and bird portraiture. He travelled extensively around the world in the late Victorian period detailing wildlife often for the first time. He is noted for illustrations that are of a particularly exact nature.

Early Life

John Guille Millais was the fourth son and seventh child of Sir John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite Painter and his wife Effie Gray. He grew up in London and Perthhire with a wide interest in natural history which embraced horticulture, big game hunting and particularly wildfowl. As a boy he made a collection of birds shot around the Perthshire coast of Scotland where he spent much of his childhood. This formed the basis of a lifetime collection of around 3,000 specimens that he later housed in a private museum in Horsham in West Sussex, England.

Working Life

Millais began his career in the army with the Seaforth Highlanders but after six years he resigned to travel the world. His was clearly a wanderlust based on a desire to see record and paint the natural world. To this end he travelled widely in Europe, Africa and North America. In the New World in the 1880s/90s he explored Canada and Newfoundland and helped map uncharted areas of Alaska.

In 1903 he was a founder of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire (SPWFE).Clearly a clubbable and convivial man Millais founded the Shikar Club in 1909 a dining club where like minded associates could dine and discuss their adventures in Africa. Members included the famous hunters Frederick Selous, the brother of ornithologist Edmund Selous, Arthur Nuemann and the explorer and game hunter Frank Wallace. The club still survives and includes the Duke of Edinburgh amongst its members.

During the Great War (1914 – 1918) whilst in his fifties he served in the secret service of the Royal Navy in Norway and in Iceland. In the period immediately after the War J G Millais wrote and published a book on his life and hunting exploits in Africa and Scotland . ‘Wanderings and Memories’ chronicled his passion for big game hunting and also his fondness for Scotland of his childhood. There is also contains a chapter from a famous elephant hunter of the day Arthur Neumann who was a close friend. . This edition went to several reprints including an American edition renamed ‘A Sportsman’s Wanderings’ In 1921 he travelled with his son Raoul Millais to the southern Sudan and mapped for the first time large areas of Bahr al Ghazal, an exploit which led to a book on the Upper Nile

Artistic Career

Millais’ is one of the most respected of British ornithologists and bird artists producing between 1890 and 1914 a series of books on birds and other natural history subjects. In the study of ornithology he was renowned for his portraiture of wildfowl and game birds, the subjects of his three most famous works: ‘Natural History of British Feeding Ducks’; ‘British Diving Ducks’; and ‘British Game Birds’.

They rank amongst some of the finest work on wildfowl ever published. Each bird receives individual treatment in text and detailed exact chromolithographs , some of which are by his friend and pre eminent bird artist of the day Archibald Thorburn (1860 – 1935). Each species is represented by two or three individuals on a plate drawn in attitudes of feeding, resting and courtship.

The books are lavish and with just 400 to 600 original editions published are now prized as examples of a certain type of High Victorian grandeur. Millais’ skills are essentially Victorian as private wealth allowed him to indulge on a grand scale his passions. He was undoubtedly tenacious. His son Raoul Millais spoke of him as an ‘astonishing man and his power of concentration was such that once he took up a subject he never left it until he knew more about it than anyone in the World’ This tenacity to get a job done to the best of abilities was never better illustrated in his preparations for Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland(1904) where he spent months with the whaling fleet in the Atlantic in order to study first hand a group of mammals that had hitherto received little attention. The work which appeared in a limited print run in 1904 also contains illustrations and chromolithographs by George Edward Lodge (1860-1954) and Archibald Thorburn.

He also wrote a biography of his father John Everett Millais and Frederick Courtney Selous.In addition there were important authoritative works on rhododendrons, azaleas and magnolias and also a number of sculptures of birds including one of fighting game birds now owned by the Horsham Museum.

The Sussex Years

Johnny Millais settled his family in England at Horsham in West Sussex. The house was called Compton's Brow from where he created a private museum and a garden remembered for its beauty. He cultivated a number of new rhodedendrums including one he named after his wife and his daughter Rosamond Millais (often misspelt Rosamund). The garden did not survive his death but a few smaller notable plants were saved, some of which where replanted in the Windsor Great Park by his son Ted.

Millais had the ability to convey the subtlety of the natural world with an artistic skill that marks him out as a great bird artist in particular. His gift was to communicate his love and respect for the natural world.

He died at Horsham on March 24th 1931, the sixty-sixth anniversay of his birth.

References

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  1.Mallard from British Surface feeding Ducks by J G Millais
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  2.Teal from British Surface Feeding Ducks by J G Millais