Autumn Leaves

Millais told his wife he wanted a picture full of beauty and without a subject, and this is about as close as a Victorian painter got to that. Four girls gather fallen leaves into a heap at dusk. They are building a bonfire, but you never see the flame, only a thread of smoke rising between the leaves. The critic John Ruskin called it the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight, and there is a private edge to that praise. The two girls on the left are Alice and Sophy Gray, the younger sisters of Millais's wife Effie, and Effie had until recently been married to Ruskin himself before that marriage was annulled and she wed the painter. The falling leaves and fading light carry the old theme of youth and beauty passing. It went on view at the Royal Academy in 1856.