Infancy

Infancy, painted in 1847 when Millais was eighteen, belongs to the same series of allegorical life-stage canvases at Leeds Art Gallery as the companion pieces Old Age, Youth, Manhood, Music, and Poetry. As the earliest stage of life, infancy held particular cultural significance for Victorian painters and poets, who drew on Wordsworth's celebration of childhood as the time of closest proximity to the divine — when the 'intimations of immortality' were still fresh. Millais's treatment of infancy in the context of this series would have required him to resolve the iconographic and compositional challenges of presenting a very young child in a way that served the allegorical programme without becoming merely anecdotal. That this student work survives in Leeds along with multiple companion pieces suggests that the series was acquired or given as a group, rather than through individual sales.

The painting of an infant presented specific technical challenges in rendering the particular quality of very young skin — softer and more translucent than adult flesh, with different colour distribution. Millais, even as a student, was attentive to such distinctions. The compositional approach would have balanced the allegorical requirement to present infancy as a dignified subject with the natural informality of a young child.