John Everett Millais [1829–1896] was a British painter and a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He fused realism and romanticism in his paintings, and is known for his striking portraits and dramatic scenes in paintings. Some of his well-known paintings include Ophelia [1851] and The Princes in the Tower [1878], and he also painted such historic and fictional personages as Joan of Arc, Cinderella and Isabella (from John Keats’s poem).

I. Apple Blossoms/Spring [1859]

This painting seems to celebrate the coming of spring, youth and merriment, showing eight girls relaxing on the green lawn under the apple blossoms. The girls are all dressed in different-coloured dresses taking their refreshments. However, the painting also has one disturbing connotation. In the right-hand corner, there is a scythe, a tool which has notoriously been associated with death. The girl in the yellow dress lying on the grass also makes the painting a little eerie as her gaze is directed straight on to the viewer, challenging them to return the stare as she carelessly plays with a a grass stem in her mouth. The scythe, which is probably intentionally situated near the girl dressed in black, seems to hint at the idea that even the most joyful and healthy beings must come to an end and every representation of beauty must, by nature, hide a more sinister meaning.

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