A paz concluída

The Crimean War ended in the spring of 1856, and Millais painted a wounded British officer home from it, propped in an armchair reading the peace terms in The Times. On his wife's lap sit four toy animals the children are handing up to him — a lion, a bear, a rooster and a turkey, standing in for Britain, Russia, France and the Ottomans, the powers that had just settled. The woman is Millais's own wife Effie, who years earlier had been married to the critic John Ruskin before leaving him for the painter. Ruskin still reviewed the picture, and praised it lavishly, comparing Millais's colour to Titian's. Millais had first meant the scene as a dig at pampered officers who went home on leave while their men stayed in the Crimean cold, then softened it once the war was over.