Dora

John Everett Millais

Date: c. 1856

Materials: Pencil with ink wash 

A design for Edward Moxon's 1857 edition of Tennyson's 'Poems', which contained twenty-four illustrations by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, eighteen of them by Millais.

In the poem 'Dora', the heroine's cousin William refuses the command of hisfather, farmer Allan, to marry her; instead, he weds a labourer's daughter, Mary, who bears him a son. Only after William's death is Dora able to soften the old man's heart.

Millais's design shows her comforting Allan as he is reconciled with his daughter-in-law and grandson (the latter dressed, according to Victorian custom, in skirts).