Wilkie Collins

Millais's portrait of the novelist Wilkie Collins of 1850 depicts his closest friend and future collaborator — the author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone — at age twenty-six, shortly before the two writers began the theatrical and literary collaboration that would produce some of the most important sensation fiction of the Victorian era. The portrait was painted in the year of the founding Pre-Raphaelite exhibition and demonstrates Millais's ability to produce compelling psychological portraiture alongside his more programmatic Brotherhood works. Collins's bearded, intense face is rendered with characteristic Pre-Raphaelite directness.

The Pre-Raphaelite precision of the portrait creates a vivid, unidealized likeness of the young writer. The bright, natural light and careful rendering of features demonstrate how Pre-Raphaelite technique enhanced portraiture.