Hearts are Trumps

Hearts are Trumps of 1872, in the National Gallery, depicts three sisters — the daughters of Edward Heaton — playing cards in what appears to be a comfortable interior. Millais had been asked to paint a triple portrait of the three Armstrong sisters, and he chose to represent them as players in a card game, the title referring both to the game and to the language of romantic attraction — hearts, in card play and in love, trumping all other suits. The triple portrait format had a distinguished history in British painting, most notably Van Dyck's Three Children of Charles I, which Millais almost certainly had in mind. The work is ambitious in scale and in the challenge of animating three separate but related personalities within a single unified composition. Its popular success reflected a growing public appetite for works that combined high finish with narrative readability.

Oil on canvas, large in scale, the painting requires Millais to coordinate three distinct physiognomies and temperaments within a single coherent design. He achieves this through careful arrangement of the figures at the card table, each turned at a slightly different angle to the viewer. The interior setting is painted with rich attention to fabric textures, upholstery, and the soft light of an enclosed room.