Youth

Youth, painted in 1847, belongs to a group of allegorical works Millais produced as a young Royal Academy student, exploring the stages of human life as a traditional pictorial subject. At sixteen in 1847, Millais was already an established prodigy — the youngest student ever admitted to the Royal Academy Schools — and these allegorical subjects, which included companion pieces representing other stages of life, demonstrate his early ambition to work within established academic conventions of high-minded subject matter. The classical theme of the ages of man had been explored in European painting and poetry since antiquity, and its Victorian iteration was inflected by Romantic ideas about the particular value of youth as a time of unclouded hope and possibility. Temple Newsam, the historic house near Leeds that holds this work, has a collection with strong eighteenth and nineteenth century holdings that places such Victorian allegorical works in a broader historical context.

The paint handling shows Millais as a precocious student still working within academic conventions, with careful modelling and a relatively smooth surface. The composition and figure arrangement demonstrate the academic training he had received since entering the Royal Academy Schools at eleven. The palette is warm and conventional, without the intense clear colour that would characterise his Pre-Raphaelite work from 1848 onward.