L'Ordre de libération

Millais painted this in 1852 and 1853, and the woman handing over the release papers was Effie Ruskin, the wife of the critic John Ruskin, his most important supporter. Ruskin himself encouraged the arrangement, sending his wife to sit for the young painter he was championing. While the picture was being made, Millais and Effie fell in love. The full title is The Order of Release, 1746, and the scene is set just after the failed Jacobite rising of 1745. A Highland soldier has been imprisoned, and his wife arrives with the order that frees him, a child asleep on her shoulder and the family dog leaping up at them. So a painting about a loyal wife freeing her husband was modelled by a woman who, within two years, would have her marriage to Ruskin annulled and marry Millais instead, in one of the great scandals of Victorian London. Henry Tate gave it to the nation in 1898.