Waking

Waking of 1866, now at Perth Art Gallery, shows a young woman in the moment of rousing from sleep — a theme that occupied many Victorian painters, partly because it permitted the depiction of a woman in a state of dishabille and unguardedness without the overtly voyeuristic charge of a sleeping figure. The just-woken subject is semi-aware, caught in the transition between the private world of sleep and the social world of waking life. Perth Art Gallery holds an important collection of Victorian and Scottish painting, and a Millais from the mid-1860s represents a key phase in his development, when he was moving from the detailed naturalism of his Pre-Raphaelite period toward the more fluid, broadly painted style of his mature career. The date 1866 places this work just after some of his most celebrated narrative paintings and before the sequence of purely contemplative fancy pictures that would follow.

Oil on canvas, the work uses warm tones to evoke morning light. The figure's hair is loosely painted, suggesting the disorder of just-woken state. Millais's technique is transitional here — more spontaneous than his early work but still attentive to the description of fabric and texture. Light falls softly, without harsh shadows.