Girl's Head

Girl's Head, painted in 1864 on a wooden panel and held at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, belongs to the tradition of head studies that Millais produced throughout his career as independent works of art rather than preparatory material. Such studies had a long history in European painting — Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian all produced head studies that circulated as works of art in their own right — and in the Victorian period they occupied a middle position between commissioned portrait and academic exercise. Millais was exceptionally gifted at capturing the particular quality of female youth, and head studies allowed him to concentrate exclusively on the face without the distractions of dress, setting, or social context. The Walker Art Gallery, as the principal civic collection of Liverpool, holds several significant Victorian works reflecting the collecting priorities of a major northern industrial city.

The panel support creates a smooth, stable surface well suited to the fine work of a head study. Millais uses his characteristic technique for female faces: subtle tonal gradations of warm and cool flesh tones, careful attention to the specific qualities of skin at different locations on the face, and the warm luminosity of eyes modelled with precise observation.