John Guille Millais

John Guille Millais (MIL-ay, also US: mil-AY; 24 March 1865 – 24 March 1931) was a British artist, naturalist, gardener and travel writer who specialised in wildlife and flower 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 Brotherhood painter, and his wife Effie Gray. John was raised in London and Perthshire with a wide interest in natural history, which embraced horticulture, hunting including big game hunting and wildfowl. As a boy he made a collection of birds shot around the coast of Scotland later recounted in his book "The Wildfowler in Scotland". 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. Specimens from this collection were depicted by his father in his painting The Ruling Passion (also known as The Ornithologist). John Guille himself painted a bird in his father's painting Dew-Drenched Furze.

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.