The Return of the Dove to the Ark

Artist Sir John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896)

Date1851

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions76.2 x 50.8 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Lane Bequest, 1913.

Object number128

DescriptionA superb illustration of Millais's Pre-Raphaelite style, 'The Return of the Dove to the Ark’ is an unfinished version of a work of the same title, dated 1851, now in the Ashmolean Collection, Oxford, and is probably the most finished preparatory work for the latter. The painting depicts two of Noah's daughters-in-law holding the dove which, sent from the Ark to find land from which the flood waters have abated, has returned holding an olive branch in its beak. A similar subject was the theme of a painting by Charles Landseer, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844. Millais originally planned to include the figure of Noah and to place the group against a background of animals and birds: 'I shall have three figures', he told Thomas Combe on 28 January 1851, 'Noah praying with the olive branch in his hand, and the dove in the breast of a young girl who is looking at Noah. The other figure will be kissing the bird's breast. The background will be very novel, as I shall paint several birds and animals, one of which now forms the prey to the other' (J. G. Millais, 'The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais', London, 1899, p. 97). Ruskin much admired the finished work at the Royal Academy in 1851, except for the olive branch, which he considered, inaccurately painted.

The painting was probably conceived by Millais as a pendant work to 'Convent Thoughts', a picture similar in size and shape, with a balancing theme and already owned by the same collector, Thomas Combe, to whom Millais hoped to sell 'The Return of the Dove to the Ark'.

A sketch for the original composition, which includes Noah, is at Birmingham City Art Gallery. There is a sheet of sketches for the two girls at The Vanderbilt Art Gallery, Nashville, a finished sketch at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and a full size nude study at the Royal Academy. An anonymous wood-engraving was published in the 'Illustrated London News', 24 May 1851, p. 463.

(Extract from 'Images and Insights', Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1993, p. 200)

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