ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses John Everett Millais's paintings embody an awareness of themselves as artificially constructed objects. It suggests that his work is most compelling when it has a touch of kitsch about it, i.e. when its identity as high art seems threatened by its other uses as a means of display and a commodity to be consumed. Artists from Duccio to Doig have seen connections between their own construction of images and the other kinds of image-making that go on everywhere around them; but few have worried at them with such tenacity as Millais. Millais's paintings are better artistically when they admit more uncertainty. Several works from the decade 1850—1860 share the dramatic components of 'The Rescue' — a man, a woman, an interior, and question of heroism — but interrelate them in more interesting ways. There are similar dramatic complexities in 'The Black Brunswicker' (1859—1860) and 'The Order of Release' (1852—1853), both of which have comparable themes and structures.
