page_title: Sophie Gray
section_title: Gray as model
hierarchical_section_title: Sophie Gray / Gray as model
context_page_description: Sophia Margaret "Sophie" Gray, later Sophia Margaret Caird, was a Scottish-born model for her brother-in-law, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. She was a younger sister of Euphemia "Effie" Gray, who married Millais in 1855 after the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin. Note that the spelling of her name was, after around 1861, sometimes "Sophy," but only within the family. In public she was known as Sophie and later in life, after her marriage, as Sophia.
  From the late 1860s she suffered from a mental illness which seems to have involved a form of anorexia nervosa. In 1873 she married the Scottish entrepreneur James Caird and together they had a daughter. She died in 1882, probably as a result of her anorexia.
context_section_description: For the next few years Gray continued to sit for Millais. After he and Effie moved to Annat Lodge, close to Bowerswell, she was readily available for this purpose, but while it seems she was beginning to displace Effie herself as a favored subject, it is unsurprising that Effie wanted to keep herself out of the public eye to a degree, following the very public dissolution of her marriage.  In the words of art historian Suzanne Fagence Cooper, whose biographical chapter about Gray (2010) provides the fullest account of her life, Gray "changes before our eyes from a child to a stunning teenager." This change can be traced in three works by Millais: Autumn Leaves (1855–56), Spring (or Apple Blossoms) (1856–1859) and, most strikingly, in a small, but "unnerving" portrait of her at the age of 13, entitled Portrait of a Young Lady, or simply Sophie Gray (1857). Charles Edward Perugini also painted a portrait of Gray as a young woman; the date is not known with certainty and for some years it was attributed mistakenly to Millais.
caption: Millais's Spring (Apple Blossoms), with Gray on the far left.
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