BIRMINGHAM, UK.- The Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery presents Millais As Illustrator, through January 16, 2005. John Everett Millais (1829 to 1896) is well known as a leading Victorian painter and founder member of the Pre Raphaelite Group in 1848. This thematic show of over fifty drawings, watercolours, printed illustrations and books concentrates on his considerable achievements as a story teller and literary artist.

The works are predominantly from Birmingham Museums’ own outstanding collection of Millais drawings and engraved illustrations, with additional loans from the British Museum, the Victoria and albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

In his lifetime Millais made some 400 designs for books and periodicals, illustrating the poetry of Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, as well as novels by William Thackeray, Anthony Trollope and Harriet Martineau. He brilliantly adapted his style to the texts he illustrated, which in 1864 culminated in the publication of The Parables of the Lord. The most significant illustrator of all of the Pre-Raphaelites artists, this exhibition focuses on a less well-known aspect of Millais’s work.

Conceived by Victorian specialist Paul Goldman, working with curator Tessa Sidey, a new publication published by Lund Humphries, and including a full catalogue listing of the Millais works on paper collection at Birmingham, will accompany this exhibition. It will subsequently tour to Leighton House, London 18 February 29 April 2005.