Portrait of a young Girl

Portrait of a Young Girl, held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, belongs to the category of female portrait heads that Millais produced throughout his career alongside named society commissions. The Ashmolean, as one of Britain's oldest public museums, has a collection that spans antiquity to the modern period, with Victorian holdings that reflect acquisitions made at various points over more than a century. An unidentified young female subject would have functioned for Millais as both a commercial item — sold to an anonymous collector — and a demonstration of his extraordinary facility for capturing the particular quality of feminine youth. The combination of formal qualities in a Millais portrait of a young girl — the translucent skin, the specific quality of eye, the composed yet living expression — represented a peak of Victorian portrait painting that his contemporaries recognised and posterity has confirmed.

The canvas support and Millais's mature technique produce a portrait of delicate immediacy. The face is modelled with his characteristic sensitivity to the specific tonal gradations of young female skin, using cool shadows and warm highlights to suggest the transparency of youth. The background is minimal, focusing all attention on the face and its expression.