Lear And Cordelia 1891

Sir John Everett Millais created this small oil on canvas painting, Lear and Cordelia, at an unknown date. Millais was a master of conveying texture and emotion through his technique. Here, you can see how he’s used loose brushwork to suggest the characters’ inner turmoil. The rapid, almost frantic application of paint mirrors the chaos of the scene, drawing us into Lear’s fractured mental state. But let’s consider the social context. Oil painting in Millais’s time was a marker of status, of academic training, and a professional artistic practice. Yet Millais, along with the Pre-Raphaelites, aimed to challenge the norms of the art establishment. While embracing oil paint, he also experimented with a more direct, less polished approach. In this painting, the visible brushstrokes and the raw, almost unfinished quality of the work challenge the traditional hierarchy of art, blurring the lines between high art and the kind of expressive, process-oriented work more often associated with craft. It’s a reminder that even within established artistic traditions, there’s always room for questioning and redefinition.