Esther

Esther of 1865 depicts the Jewish heroine of the Old Testament book that bears her name: a woman who, at enormous personal risk, approaches the Persian King Ahasuerus unsummoned to plead for her people's survival. The story of Esther was frequently treated in European painting for its drama and its rare example of female agency in Biblical narrative — a woman who saves a people through courage, beauty, and moral intelligence. Millais's 1865 version comes in the middle of a decade when he engaged with several Old Testament heroines, looking for subjects that combined aesthetic beauty with narrative depth. The image of Esther in her royal robes, preparing or having just prepared to approach the king, offered a compositional opportunity to combine richness of costume with an expression of determined courage.

Oil on canvas, the painting invests heavily in the visual splendour of Esther's royal dress — the rich fabrics, jewels, and colour associated with the Persian court — as a foil to her inner state of anxious resolution. Millais's technique in the mid-1860s is fluid and confident, and the costume is rendered with the pleasure in material richness typical of his work in this period.