signed with monogram and dated 1887 l.l.
oil on canvas
155 by 130cm.; 61 by 51½in.
ESTIMATE 300,000 - 400,000 GBP
McLean's Gallery, London, 1888
Engraved by Robert Walker MacBeth and published by Thomas McLean in 1889
'Perhaps the deepest feeling of which he was capable appeared in the few pictures that he painted of actual winter. In his renderings of snow he displayed a degree of vigour that was peculiarly dramatic and admirably in keeping with the storm and stress of the winter season.'
A.L. BALDRY, SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS BART, PRA, HIS ART AND INFLUENCE, 1899
'There is a touch of poetry in the air, as the setting sun lights up the windows of the castle and leaves the snow cool in colour, varied with a hundred tints.'
M.H. SPIELMANN, MILLAIS AND HIS WORKS, 1898
'When the next picture (Christmas Eve, 1887) was taken up winter was already casting her mantle over the Northern hills. There was a keenness and a crispness in the air that filled sensitive southerners with thoughts of home; but for Millais, inured as he was to the rigours of the northern climate, winter had no terrors. He loved the
bracing air of the mountains, and above all, those fine still days that so often follow in the wake of St. Martin's summer, and hardly noticed as it came the change to biting frost and falling snow. With such protection as his hut afforded, he went steadily on with his work until, on Christmas Eve itself, the final touch was added to his painting a view of the old Castle of Murthly as seen from the north-west.' (John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899, 2 volumes, Vol. II, pp.200-203)
Among Millais' most evocative and symbolist landscape paintings, Christmas Eve depicts the garden and western façade of the fifteenth century Murthly Castle in Perthshire, the seat of Sir Archibald Douglas Stewart, 8th Baronet of Murthly. The lawns are clad in snow, only the areas beneath the majestic oaks sheltered from the snow-fall and there is a pervading sense of silence, stillness and tranquillity. The evening is drawing in and the human inhabitants have taken themselves indoors as the last glow of the sunlight reflects from the castle's windows. As they enjoy the
evening's entertainments and comforts of wood-fires and festive fare, the natural world reclaims possession of the estate. The tracks in the snow are the only signs of human activity as the grounds become the domain of the wild animals again. A group of rooks are emboldened by the absence of humans and are foraging on the lawns where hours earlier the people of the house have strolled in the chill air or perhaps where children have played with a sledge. Thus the painting conveys the contrast of human and natural activity, and of the harmony of the two. The
rooks superficially link the painting to the Blind Girl of 1854-1856 (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) and whilst these dark-plumaged birds usually symbolise death and malevolence, this symbolism is not apparent here. There are three sheets of studies for these birds in the collection of drawings at the Royal Academy (although there is some uncertainty whether they may have been drawn by his son John Guille Millais, a noted wildlife painter).
Just as Millais' famous 1853 portrait of John Ruskin (private collection) painted in the Trossachs, was produced under difficult environmental circumstances (the artist was plagued by midges), Christmas Eve was painted in adversity from a wooden hut during a cold winter amid the snow in the grounds of Murthly. The picture was painted
during Millais' seventh annual stay at Birnham Hall (also called Dalpowie) a large lodge built within the Murthly estate. The lodge was situated two miles downriver from Dunkeld, cost Millais £600 rent and was far from basic. It had running water throughout, boasted seven bedrooms, eight servant's bedrooms, a stable for six horses, kennels, fishing rights on a mile of the Tay and 6,000 acres of shootings. Millais' practice of working from a hut mirrored that of the Scottish artist Joseph Farquharson who had similarly painted several of his snow-scapes on his estate at
Finzean. The artist's son John Guille Millais recalled his father's anxiety for the safety of Christmas Eve that he had left facing the wall of the hut, following a particularly violent snowstorm one evening; 'In great anxiety he waited till
the morning, when he hastened to the spot, expecting to find the hut and its contents blown clean away. To his delight, however, there it was, standing four-square to the winds of heaven; and there, too, was the village carpenter who built it, a dear old man who lived for miles away, and, 'fearing for the hoose', had come all the way down at midnight in the blinding gale and made it thoroughly secure!' (op.cit)
Millais painted twenty-one large-scale Scottish landscapes in he last twenty-six years of his life, annually returning to Perthshire for the autumn and winter, to combine his love of painting, fishing and shooting. Although he was in his fourth decade, Millais was committed to establishing himself as a major force in Victorian landscape painting, perhaps seeking to emulate Gainsborough who had mastered both portraiture and landscape painting with equal power. As Jason Rosenfeld has explained in the Millais exhibition on 2008 which prominently included Christmas
Eve; 'That the landscapes are so rich and varied, such brilliant explorations of a single subject - Scotland - is a testament to the artist's continued singularity of vision and innovative drive... In their broad expanses, play of detail and breadth, and their enjoyment of a striking, rushing perspective, as well as their reserved tonality, these pictures represent a modern response to the environment that, like Millais's work in other genres, kept him at the forefront of innovation in the period.' (Jason Rosenfeld and Alison Smith, Millais, exhibition catalogue, 2008, p.218)
Painted a year after Bubbles (Collection of Unilever, on loan to the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) the most famous of Millais' sentimental paintings, Christmas Eve struck a different chord, being broader and more dramatic in pathos. The contrast between the two demonstrates the duality in Millais' later oeuvre that made him arguably the most popular artist of his age.
Christmas Eve was Millais' first snowy landscape. In the early 1890s Millais painted two more large wintry landscapes, Glen Birnam of 1891 (Manchester City Art Gallery) and Blow, Blow, Though Winter Wind of 1892 (Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki) in which the hardship of winter is more apparent, in the hunched figure of the
old woman swathed against the cold in the former and the dejected pose of the young woman and the howling of the dog in the latter. Whilst the chill evening air of Christmas Eve has driven the people indoors, the natural world is not depicted as aggressive and opposed to man. The romantic medieval castle exists within the landscape and is integral to it, seemingly in harmony with its surroundings which are composed of the same almost monochromatic tones. The muted tones of Christmas Eve and the two later paintings, have a powerful effect upon the landscape in
a similar way as the dark and grey tones of another major landscape of Millais' later period Chill October of 1870 (Collection of Lord Lloyd Webber) emphasise the atmospheric beauty of nature. Unlike the idyllic landscapes that form the background of many of Millais' earlier Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the later landscapes depict a nature that is untamed and although tracks have been made through the snow in Christmas Eve they are already being threatened to be covered over by the snow-laden heavy sky above. The light is crisp and clear and close examination of the myriad tones and colours of the snow demonstrates how accomplished an artist he was.
Christmas Eve became well-known from a popular etching made by the Royal Academician Robert Walker MacBeth (1848-1910) published by Thomas McLean in 1889. At his time the picture was part of the collection of the art dealer Charles Wertheimer, whose portrait Millais painted in 1888 (Musee d'Orsay). It was bought from Wertheimer by Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson (1840-1929). Robinson was born in Cape Colony and made his fortune in mining in South Africa before moving to London in 1893 where a year later he purchased Dudley House, a large mansion in Park Lane. There was a large vaulted picture gallery at Dudley House which Robinson filled with paintings by old master artists such as Tiepolo, Piero di Cosimo, Rubens and Van Dyck and outstanding eighteenth century portraits by Reynolds, Beechey, Romney, Gainsborough and Lawrence. He regarded Millais as the successor to these eighteenth century masters and owned seven major paintings by Millais, Cherry Ripe (sold in these rooms, 1 July 2004, lot 21), Cinderella (Collection of Lord Lloyd Webber), Getting Better (sold in these rooms, 30 November 200, lot 36), Shelling Peas (private collection) and another snow scene The Mistletoe Gatherer (private collection). Robinson owned The Old Garden, a landscape painted at Murthly a year after Christmas Eve.
When Robinson returned to Cape Colony in 1910 his collection of pictures were put in storage, where they remained unseen for much of the early twentieth century. In 1958, at a time when Victorian art was little appreciated, the Robinson collection was exhibited in the Diploma Gallery at the Royal Academy where it was wellreceived
by the public. In his introduction to the catalogue Mr Le Roux Smith Le Roux wrote of the pictures; 'Whatever happens to them, they remain a monument to a remarkable man, Joseph Benjamin Robinson, and their acquisition another illustration of the aptness of the motto under his coat of arms... "I have found"' (The Robinson
Collection, exhibition catalogue, 1958, p.viii)
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