John Everett Millais

Van Gogh wrote that he’d met Millais, whose work had moved him, on a London street. The precocious Millais and Hunt were students together, and meeting the like-minded Dante Rossetti, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in opposition to the Royal Academy’s taught values. He was Ruskin’s protégé and close friend, though they fell out when Millais took up with Ruskin’s rejected wife. He illustrated the work of his friends Tennyson, Thackeray and Trollope. Collins, Browning and Christina Rossetti were also friends; Dickens became one (having earlier denounced the Pre-Raphaelites); Millais drew him on his death-bed.