John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was one of the most celebrated figures of Victorian art. As a young man, he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. In later years, he rose to wealth, acclaim, and social prestige as a landscapist, illustrator, and painter of subject and genre paintings, and as the most successful British portrait painter of his generation.

This illustrated book, published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, is the first comprehensive survey of Millais's portraits. It is also a historically important record of High Victorian England, containing the artist's memorable images of such leading political and cultural figures as Gladstone, Disraeli, Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Lillie Langtry.

The book includes 136 color reproductions as well as essays by eminent scholars that place Millais's work in the context of his public and private life, making this an authoritative and visually compelling study of the artist's extraordinary contributions to portraiture.