Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896)
Title: Christmas Eve
Materials: Etching with engraving by Robert Walker Macbeth RA RWS RI (1848-1910) after Millais
Date: 1889, Published by Thomas McClean
Signed by Macbeth and Millais in pencil
Size: Frame: 72 x 51.5; Plate: 50.5 x 44
Further information: Millais started Christmas Eve from a hut out of doors, and finished it on Christmas Eve 1887 at Murthly Castle, then the seat of Sir Douglas Stewart. Millais had leased a lodge near Murthly Castle for ten years beginning in 1881, every autumn he and his family would retire there to indulge Millais' passion for fishing and field sports. John Guille Millais writes.
"In the winter, a terrific gale and snow storm raged through out the night , sweeping the valley of the Tay from end to end; and in this valley-some two miles from Birnam Hall was his shelter hut in which he had left his picture of "Christmas Eve", 1887 with wet paint turned against the wall. In great anxiety he waited till the morning, when he hastened to the spot, expecting to find the hut and its contents blown clean away. To his delight, however, there it was standing four square to the winds of heaven, and there too was the village carpenter who built it, a dear old man who lived four miles away and "fearing for the hoose," had come all the way down at midnight in the blinding gale and made it secure!
Price: £900