Old Age

Old Age, painted in 1847 when Millais was only eighteen, is one of a series of allegorical works depicting the stages of human life that he produced in his student years. The theme of old age had been a staple of European painting since antiquity, and the Victorian treatment of it was inflected by Romantic ideas about the dignity of the aged and the accumulated wisdom of a life fully lived. Companion pieces representing Youth, Infancy, Manhood, Poetry, and Music at Leeds Art Gallery place Old Age within a systematic allegorical programme — a demonstration of the young artist's ambition to work within the most elevated traditions of academic painting. Millais as a prodigy was under considerable pressure to demonstrate intellectual and artistic seriousness, and these allegorical canvases were his attempt to do so within the framework of the Royal Academy Schools. Leeds Art Gallery's holding of this group documents the full scope of Millais's student allegorical project.

The painting demonstrates the careful academic handling of Millais's student years, with smooth modelling, warm conventional lighting, and a compositional restraint appropriate to a subject of dignity and gravity. The aged figure is rendered with attention to the physical signs of age — the texture of old skin, white hair, the diminishment of physical vigour — without sentimentality.