1863
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
The Eve of St. Agnes is a 1863 watercolor by John Everett Millais, a Impressionism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Eve of St. Agnes is a watercolour by John Everett Millais. It's based on a poem by John Keats. The painting shows a woman getting ready for bed on a special night. According to folklore, this night could reveal her future husband in her dreams. You can learn more about the style of this work by looking into the movement: Realism.
A woman pauses while undressing, her bodice and petticoats gathered at her knees as she stands at the foot of a four-poster bed in a darkened chamber. Moonlight filters through a lattice window, casting angular patterns across the scene to the right. The setting is a freezing room at Knole Park, Kent, where the artist positioned his wife Effie as the model. This watercolour is a smaller version of Millais’ 1863 oil painting exhibited at the Royal Academy, depicting a moment from John Keats’s poem in which the heroine performs a ritual on St Agnes’s Eve.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet ( MIL-ay; 8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
See the richer artist page
