Only a Lock of Hair

Only a Lock of Hair, painted in 1857 on a wooden panel, depicts a woman holding or contemplating a lock of hair — a memento of a beloved person, typically associated with mourning or romantic longing in Victorian sentimental culture. The lock of hair as a keepsake had a long history in European culture, but it became particularly loaded in Victorian Britain, where elaborate mourning practices and the ritualised preservation of souvenirs from the dead gave such objects intense emotional charge. Millais painted this at a transitional moment in his career, after the dissolution of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and during the period when he was developing the broader handling and accessible subject matter that would bring him commercial success in the following decade. The panel support and the intimate subject matter suggest a small-scale work intended for private sentiment rather than public exhibition.

The panel support allows Millais to achieve a delicate, smooth surface quality appropriate to the intimate emotional register of the subject. The woman's face and the lock of hair are rendered with careful attention — both are objects of intense contemplation for the figure, and Millais makes them objects of equal visual intensity for the viewer. The colour is warm and muted, appropriate to the reflective mood.