Artwork details, Liverpool museums See a larger version About the artwork One of the most famous paintings by the Victorian artist Sir John Millais has been placed on long loan at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. It has been lent by Unilever. 'Bubbles' was painted in 1885-6. It shows a boy blowing bubbles with a pipe and a bowl of soap suds. The boy was the artist’s grandson, Willie James, aged about four: he later became an Admiral. To get round the problems of painting the bubbles, the artist had a glass sphere specially manufactured. Millais originally titled his painting 'A Child’s World' but it was later changed to 'Bubbles'. As a young man, Millais was one of the chief artists in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , which set out to attack the complacency of the Royal Academy. He painted masterpieces such as 'Isabella' ( Walker Art Gallery ) and ' Ophelia ' ( Tate Britain ) in a new style with bright colours, wiry outlines and minute detail. By the time he painted 'Bubbles', Millais was in his 50s. He had abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style and had adopted darker colours and looser brushwork.

No longer a rebel, he had joined the Royal Academy and had become a pillar of the art establishment. Much of his work at this stage in his career featured sentimental portrayals of small children. Other examples, at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, are 'Little Speedwell’s Darling Blue' and 'The Nest'. Although 'Bubbles' may appear sentimental to modern taste, it has a serious meaning. Millais was using a symbol with a long tradition behind it. 'Bubbles' are fragile and have a brief moment of beauty before they burst. In the 17th century Dutch artists painted children blowing bubbles to convey the brevity of human life, the transience of beauty and the inevitability of death. This theme appealed to Millais and is a key to several other of his paintings, such as ' Spring (Apple Blossoms) ' also at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Amongst the beauty of the young girls and the spring flowers in this picture, Millais painted a scythe, to indicate that beauty fades and that death awaits us all. This aspect of 'Bubbles' was not obvious to the Victorians. Victorian artists associated childhood with sweetness and innocence.

The attitude is seen in the book illustrations of Kate Greenaway and in historical pictures such as 'And when did you last see your father?' by W. F. Yeames (Walker Art Gallery). It had also been seen in the 18th century in pictures like ' The Age of Innocence ' (Tate Britain) by Sir Joshua Reynolds , who was much admired by Millais. The interpretation of childhood changed radically after Freud wrote about it as a troubled period of latent sexuality, but it would be unhistorical to expect Millais to reflect these ideas in his work. Listen to a recording of Julian Treuherz's gallery talk on 'Bubbles' online now . The painting was brought from Millais by Sir William Ingram, proprietor of the Illustrated London News, a popular magazine with a wide circulation. Ingram also bought the copyright from the artist. He published 'Bubbles' as a special presentation colour print with the Christmas number of the magazine in 1887. (Other paintings of children by Millais had been published with previous Christmas numbers with great success.) Before its appearance in the magazine, the painting with its copyright was sold to A & F Pears, manufacturers of Pears soap.

The Managing Director of Pears, Thomas Barrett, was a pioneer of modern advertising methods, and he and William Lever of Lever Brothers, makers of Sunlight Soap, were great rivals, each spending vast sums on promoting their brands. Barrett turned 'Bubbles' into an advertisement by adding a bar of soap in the foreground. Millais was furious, but he could do nothing about it. Millais was unfairly criticised for degrading his art, but as the copyright owner, Barrett was within his rights. And the use of the painting for advertising meant that the picture became the best known of all his works. Lever responded to Barrett’s initiative in 1889 by purchasing ' The New Frock ' by Frith and using this to advertise Sunlight Soap, again without the artist’s permission. Frith’s painting and others used for Sunlight Soap advertising, are now part of the Lady Lever Art Gallery collection. In 1914 Lever Brothers acquired A & F Pears, and subsequently the company became part of the Unilever Group. Pears was retained as a separate brand and the company kept 'Bubbles' at its head office.

It was recently on loan to the Royal Academy in London, and has now been transferred on long loan to the Lady Lever Art Gallery where it joins an already strong group of the artist’s works. Bubbles | John Everett Millais | V&A Search the Collections Download PDF version This is a presentation plate of a reproduction of a painting of his grandson by Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896). Thomas J. Barratt (1842-1914) of A. & F. Pears bought the painting by Millais in 1886. He then reproduced it as a print, which became known as ‘Bubbles’. Barratt devised a series of expensive and original publicity schemes for Pears, the most famous of which was the adaptation of this painting as an advertisement for Pears Soap, with the addition of a bar of Pears Soap in the lower right corner. He also promoted art through the pages of Pears Annual (published 1890-1921, and price six pence until 1915). Presentation plates such as this one were given away as a separate package with the Pears Annual.

'Artistic’ advertising such as this appeared in the UK in the 1880s initially characterised by the use of reproductions of works of art. T. J. Barratt was particularly keen to use the work of Royal Academicians, in order to add kudos and respectability to his product and so target middle-income customers. . Physical description Chromolithographed presentation print after the painting 'A Child's World' by Sir John Everett Millais, featuring a young child playing with bubbles. Place of Origin John Everett Millais, born 1829 - died 1896 (artist) A. & F. Pears Ltd. (publisher) Materials and Techniques Chromolithograph on paper Marks and inscriptions 'BUBBLES. / From the Original Painting by the late Sir John E. Millais Bt. President of the Royal Academy / in the possession of Messrs. Pears.' 'JM 1886' Height: 94.8 cm, Width: 63.8 cm Object history note The original painting was entitlerd 'A Child's World' and the model was Sir John Everett Millais' grandson.

(Information from Terry Parker, a collector/dealer and expert on Pears advertising, via Archivist at Unilever). "'Bubbles' was exhibited at Tooth & Sons Gallery, 5 and 6 Haymarket, London, Spring 1886 no. 118. Sir Ingram, head of the Illustrated London News bought it from there to reproduce as one of four presentation plates given away with the Illustrated London News, Christmas 1886. Thomas Barrat saw the painting in his office and immediately decided to buy it. Ingram agreed as long as they could still reproduce it in ILN Christmas edition 1886, which obviously pre-dates A&F Pears presentation prints given away with the 1897 Annual. (The ILN version is smaller I believe and inferior print quality). Terry has come across one earlier A&F print which may have been a trial run, dated 1894. All of these were without the soap bar. The image was so successful that it was later used in dozens of different formats from postcards and showcards to billboard posters, with the addition of the bar of soap and A&F Pear logo." Descriptive line 'Bubbles'.

Chromolithographed presentation print after the painting 'A Child's World' by Sir John Everett Millais (1886), featuring a young child playing with bubbles. Issued by A.& F. Pears Ltd., manufacturers of Pears' soap, Great Britain, post-1896. Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no) Summary Catalogue of British Posters to 1988 in the Victoria & Albert Museum in the Department of Design, Prints & Drawing. Emmett Publishing, 1990. 129 p. ISBN: 1 869934 12 1 Labels and date Millais' paintings of children were some of the most reproduced images of the 19th century. A. & F. Pears produced this print to advertise soap. The fact that both subject matter and artist were popular with middle class viewers lent kudos and respectability to the product [] Materials Bubble History The enviable international reputation and commercial success which the London based firm of A. & F.

Pears has enjoyed for nearly two hundred years is due largely to the efforts of two men: Andrew Pears, a farmer's son from Cornwall, and Thomas J. Barratt, a man often referred to as the father of modern advertising. Between them, though a generation was to separate their individual involvement with the firm, they evolved a classic threefold formula for success: spotting a gap on the market, developing a high quality product to fill it, and convincing as many people as possible to buy that product by the use of extensive promotion and advertising. Andrew Pears arrived in London in 1789 from his native Cornish village of Mevagissey, where he had trained as a barber. He opened premises in Gerrard Street, Soho - then a fashionable residential area - and was soon enjoying considerable patronage from wealthy families, whose tonsorial needs were attended to by Pears in their own homes. The Gerrard Street shop was used for the manufacture and sale of rouges, powders, creams, dentifrice's and other beauty aids-preparations used extensively by the rich to cover up the damage caused by the harsh soaps then used in Britain.

The astute Cornishman recognized the potential of a purer, more gentle soap which would treat more kindly the delicate alabaster complexions then in favor (the upper classes unfavorably associated tanned faces with those of the lower orders who were obliged to toil out of doors for a living). He set about perfecting a manufacturing process for such a product and after much trial and error hit upon a method - which remains substantially similar even today- involving removing impurities and refining the base soap before adding the delicate perfume of English garden flowers. Not only was this product of high quality, it also possessed the great novelty value of being transparent. And it was this latter aspect which gave Pears Soap just the image it needed to be clearly identified by the public. Though other products were manufactured alongside the transparent soap for many, many years (examples can be found in the following pages), it was clear almost from the very start that Andrew Pears' fortune would be vested in his shilling and half crown squares of amber soap. In 1835 he took on a partner, his grandson Francis Pears, and they moved to new premises at 55 Wells Street, just off the busy shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street.

The business had consolidated to such an extent that three years later old Andrew was able to retire, leaving Francis in sole charge. Andrew Pears' legacy was a solid, if not particularly extensive or go ahead trading concern. Like many Victorian small businesses, it catered to a particular class of customer, whom it respected and wished to please. Andrew Pears was a cautious man, and he cared more for the quality of the products that bore his name than the number of people who bought them. Dogged by inferior imitations, at one stage he even went so far as to sign personally every package he sold. Because of the high price of his products, the market for them was necessarily an exclusive one, and there was little need or point in extensive advertising to try and widen this. Expenditure on sales promotion in the early Victorian period rarely exceeded ,80 per annum. Sensing the impending stagnation of the firm, and recognizing the increasing buying power of the middle classes, Francis Pears realized that unless he developed and expanded the family firm he would soon be pushed to one side by more competitive rivals.

New offices were opened in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, and in 1862 he bought a house and land at Isleworth in Middlesex, where he built a factory which he placed under the dominion of his young son Andrew. Widespread changes soon took place in the sedate and gentlemanly atmosphere of the West End offices, and into the firm came a new partner, Thomas J. Barratt, who had married Francis Pears' eldest daughter Mary. Barratt was far sighted, aggressive, willing to take risks and infinitely resourceful. Within months he had completely revolutionized Pears' distribution system and was turning his hand towards improving the firm's sales performance by means of expensive and highly original publicity schemes. All this was too much even for Francis Pears, who, fearing imminent bankruptcy, withdrew from the firm, taking most of the money and leaving only 4000 pounds as a loan to be discharged equally by his son and Barratt, who were to remain in sole charge of the business. Barratt has many modern counter parts in the advertising agencies of Madison Avenue, and his methods were to become widely followed.

He imported a quarter of a million French ten centime pieces (accepted in lieu of a penny in Britain), had the name 'Pears' stamped on every one of them and put the coins into circulation. Since there was no law forbidding the defacing of foreign currency, his scheme earned Pears much valuable publicity until an Act of Parliament could be hastily introduced to declare all foreign coinage illegal tender. The offending coins were withdrawn from circulation and melted down. He persuaded prominent skin specialists, doctors and chemists to give glowing testimonials to Pears Soap; among these were Sir Erasmus Wilson, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Doctor Redwood, Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy to the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, who personally guaranteed that Pears Soap possessed 'the properties of an edicient yet mild detergent without any of the objection able properties of ordinary soaps'. Such endorsements were boldly displayed in magazine and newspaper advertise meets, as handbills and on posters.

Lillie Langtry, a highly popular actress of the day, cheerfully gave Barratt a commendation for Pears Soap (for which, as with the other illustrious patrons, no fee was asked) and he broke into the American market by persuading the enormously influential religious leader Henry Ward Beecher to equate cleanliness, and Pears Soap in particular, with Godliness - Barratt promptly buying up the whole of the front page of the New York Herald on which to display this glowing testimonial. It seemed no stone was left unturned in Barratt's endless search for good publicity. Infants whose arrival in the world was commemorated in the columns of The Times received a complimentary cake of soap and pictorial advertising leaflets by courtesy of Barratt. His most audacious publicity scheme, which in the end failed to get off the ground, was the offer of ,100,000 to the British Government to buy the back page of a contemporary national census form for Pears' use. Had he succeeded, Barratt would have put his firm's name before 35,000,000 people's eyes.

But the best-remembered piece of publicity which Barratt devised was the use of Sir John Everett Millais' painting 'Bubbles' as an advertisement for Pears. The model for 'Bubbles' was the artist's grandson, Willie (later Admiral Sir William)James, and the curlyheaded little boy made his first appearance at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1886; the picture was originally titled 'A Child's World'. The picture was bought by Sir William Ingram of the Illustrated London News for reproduction as a presentation plate in that magazine, and after use it was sold to Barratt for 2200 pounds. Though this gave Pears exclusive copyright on the picture, Millais' permission had still to be obtained before it could be modified (by the addition of a bar of transparent soap) for use as an advertisement. At first Millais, then unquestionably the richest and most popular painter in Britain, was apprehensive about such pointedly commercial exploitation of his work, but mollified by the high quality of the proofs which Barratt brought to his studio, he gradually warmed to the idea.

Once the advertisement appeared he was obliged to defend himself vigorously against a hostile art world, and even as late as 1899, three years after his death, the affair was still a matter for debate in letters to The Times. Barratt claimed to have spent 30,000 on the 'Bubbles" campaign, and the number of individual reproductions of the painting ran into millions. By any standards, it was an unqualified success, whatever the critics had to say. Even today, 'Bubbles' remains one of the most instantly recognizable advertising symbols ever devised, and many of the prints, which Pears later made available to the public, were framed and hung in living rooms around the world. Barratt evidently had a ready eye for the commercial potential of art, for another of his acquisitions, Landseer's 'Monarch of the Glen', though never used by Pears themselves beyond appearing as a color plate in the 1916 Pears Annual, duly became the distinctive trademark of the distilling firm of John Dewar & Sons, with whom A. & F. Pears had links. Barratt thus held two trump cards. In one hand was an immediately recognizable product, Pears Transparent Soap.

In the other was the association (in the popular mind at least) between that product and culture, represented by 'Bubbles'. It was a combination which was to represent Pears' public image for many years to come, and continues today with the tradition of each young Miss Pears (the winner of an annual competition) having her portrait painted by a recognized artist. Barratt time and again capitalized on this association. He brought art to the public eye through Pears Annual, first published in 1891 and surviving until 1920. The Annual was a large-format, limp cover publication containing, in addition to advertising for Pears' and other firms' products, quality fiction (Dickens's Christmas Books were reprinted in early editions), illustrations (as the years went by there was an increase in the use of color plates and second-color tints) and at least two large, separately packaged prints for framing. All this, at least until 1915, for sixpence!

Barratt evidently had philanthropic as well as commercial motives in bringing art to the public eye: the 1897 edition claimed that: 'It is beyond controversy that, before the popular advent of Pears Annual, pictures of the refined quality of our Presentation Plates (which surpass any works of even this high" class order ever previously attempted) were unattainable by picture-lovers at anything less than a guinea a-piece. Our ambition has been to offer an appreciative and increasing public, which has grown to expect these advantages at our hands, presentation pictures of superior quality and of artistic values, to ensure our extended popularity, and to constitute Pears Annual the foremost achievement of this kind. . . " The bonne bouche of Pears Annual 1897 will be readily recognized in the two large Presentation Plates, after the late and ever-to-be-lamented President of the Royal Academy, Sir John Everett Millais, whose two chefs-d'oeuqJre, the well known pictures, 'Cherry Ripe' and 'Bubbles', are now placed within the means of the million for the first time, so beautifully reproduced as scarcely to be distinguishable from the original pictures themselves . . .

which now have a value of more than 10,000 pounds for the pair. And whilst so long as Pears Annual is produced it will ever be our aim, so far as it is in our power, to maintain its excellence, we do not expect again to have the opportunity of furnishing you with such a pair of pictures as these -worthy, as they are, of being framed and hung in the first and most artistic houses in the land.' Two points in this lurching piece of Victorian prose are worth picking up on. Firstly, the chromolithographic plates were undoubtedly 'beautifully reproduced', since they were printed from no less than 24 separate color blocks; this book, as with almost all modern book production, uses a mere four impositions. Secondly, they were 'scarcely to be distinguishable from the original pictures' through a painstaking process (made defunct by the advent of photolithography) in which the original painting was copied and etched out by craftsmen on to each of the 24 stone blocks in turn. The original artists for these presentation plates included Frank Dadd, J. C.

Dollman, Hugh Thompson, Will Owen (of 'Bisto Kids' fame), Maurice Greiffenhagen, Gordon Browne and Tom Browne. They were printed in huge quantities; records survive showing that Pears spent 17,500 on producing the 'Bubbles" print alone and almost all were still available to order by the time the last issue of Pears Annual appeared in 1920. Colored frontispieces, which generally repeated material used in the Annual or as ad advertisements, were also used in the famous Pears Cyclopaedia, first published in 1897 and still issued today. Barratt died on 28 April 1914, aged 72. He was widely mourned, particularly among the press and advertising fraternities. To the latter especially he had opened up new horizons; he joined Pears at a time when advertising was limited by and large to small newspaper advertisements and crudely executed handbills and posters, and lived to see it-brought, to a great extent through his own example, to undreamed of sophistication.

He forced the manufacturing world to see the ad-vantages of paying good money for good advertising; in the 1880s Pears were spending between 30,000 and ,40,000 pounds a year on advertising and by 1907 the figure had risen to 126,000. He pioneered the technique, so familiar today, of saturation advertising; W. E. Gladstone, searching for a metaphor to convey a sense of vast quantity during a debate on a topic now forgotten in the House of Commons, suggested the articles in question were as numerous as the advertisements of Pears Soap, or as autumn leaves in Vallombrosa'. On hoardings and on railway stations, in the press and on buses, the name of Pears Soap was everywhere in Victorian and Edwardian times. And what of the material which Barratt put before the public and which is reproduced in this book? Much of it strikes the modern eye as unashamedly sentimental, but this was to the taste of the day - a taste which Pears were quick to recognize and cater for.

Children (whether angelic or recalcitrant), animals, flowers and beautiful women are common denominators in the market appeal of advertising, especially when aimed, as Pears Soap mostly was, at female buyers. Pears' slogans -'Matchless for the complexion', 'Good morning! Have you used Pears Soap?' were simple and unchanging, reflecting an era of guilelessness and security in which the good things in life might reasonably be taken for granted - at least by the more fortunate. Only the pictures themselves changed from time to time, and it is interesting to look at a 1907 newspaper interview with Barratt in which he says: 'Tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them. An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today. Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different - it hits the present taste.' A generation! Modern advertising thinks in terms of weeks, its campaigns changing direction like yachts in a strong breeze.

Pears advertising, to suit its brand image, was tasteful and restrained, needing no recourse to the hyperbolics often encountered elsewhere in the period we are considering. The message was simple: that Pears Soap was safe and healthy and that it made its users beautiful. It savors of prestige advertising, embodying an unquestioned market supremacy; probably there is a good hint of snobbery here as well, for while the middle classes are invariably seen as healthy and self assured, the social inferiors like servants, ragged urchins and in particular black people are frequently seen as figures of fun. In design terms, many of the advertisements illustrated here could be stripped of their typography and considered purely as genre paintings - as some of them indeed originally were. Though the product name and captions are generally in harmony with the pictures, they are typical of this transitional period of advertising design in that lettering and illustration are not considered as a single unified and integrated entity. But their appeal is simple and immediate, requiring no sophisticated interpretation: they provoke an emotional rather than intellectual response. Barratt aimed, he said, to make his advertisements 'telling, artistic, picturesque, attractive, pretty, amusing' - and of course commercially successful.

If for nothing more than that they took art out of the galleries and into homes and streets, thus brightening the humdrum lives of ordinary people, they are worthy of remembrance. Bubbles - Русская лаковая миниатюра Bubbles Condition New This beautiful box is an exceptional creation of talented Fedoskino artist, Yevgeniy Dokuchaev. The world-known composition " Bubbles" painted in 1885-86 by John Everett Millais inspired Dokuchaev to create this work. Warning: Last items in stock! Availability date: Send to a friend Bubbles This beautiful box is an exceptional creation of talented Fedoskino artist, Yevgeniy Dokuchaev. The world-known composition " Bubbles" painted in 1885-86 by John Everett Millais inspired Dokuchaev to create this work. Recipient : E-mail address of your friend * : * Required fields $395.00 Quantity This product is not sold individually. You must select at least 1 quantity for this product. Add to cart Fedoskino More info This beautiful box is an exceptional creation of talented Fedoskino artist, Yevgeniy Dokuchaev.

The world-known composition " Bubbles" painted in 1885-86 by John Everett Millais inspired Dokuchaev to create this work. John Everett Millais(1829- 1896) was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator. He was born in Southampton, England in 1829, of a prominent Jersey-based family. His prodigious artistic talent won him a place at the Royal Academy schools at the unprecedented age of eleven. His early works were painted with great attention to detail, often concentrating on the beauty and complexity of the natural world. By the 1870s Millais was the most successful artist in Britain, earning an impressive £30,000 annually and gaining international stature through exposure at a succession of World's Fairs. One of the most famous paintings by the Victorian artist Sir John Millais has been placed on long loan at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. It has been lent by Unilever. "Bubbles" was painted in 1885-6. It shows a boy blowing bubbles with a pipe and a bowl of soap suds. The boy was the artist's grandson, Willie James, aged about four: he later became an Admiral.

To get round the problems of painting the bubbles, the artist had a glass sphere specially manufactured. Millais originally titled his painting "A Child's World" but it was later changed to "Bubbles". As a young man, Millais was one of the chief artists in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which set out to attack the complacency of the Royal Academy. He painted masterpieces such as "Isabella" (Walker Art Gallery) and "Ophelia" (Tate Britain) in a new style with bright colors, wiry outlines and minute detail. By the time he painted "Bubbles", Millais was in his 50s. He had abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style and had adopted darker colors and looser brushwork. No longer a rebel, he had joined the Royal Academy and had become a pillar of the art establishment. Much of his work at this stage in his career featured sentimental portrayals of small children. Other examples, at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, are "Little Speedwell's Darling Blue" and "The Nest". Although "Bubbles" may appear sentimental to modern taste, it has a serious meaning. Millais was using a symbol with a long tradition behind it.

"Bubbles" are fragile and have a brief moment of beauty before they burst. In the 17th century Dutch artists painted children blowing bubbles to convey the brevity of human life, the transience of beauty and the inevitability of death. This theme appealed to Millais and is a key to several other of his paintings, such as "Spring (Apple Blossoms)" also at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Amongst the beauty of the young girls and the spring flowers in this picture, Millais painted a scythe, to indicate that beauty fades and that death awaits us all. This aspect of "Bubbles" was not obvious to the Victorians. Victorian artists associated childhood with sweetness and innocence. The attitude is seen in the book illustrations of Kate Greenaway and in historical pictures such as "And when did you last see your Father?" by W. F. Yeames (Walker Art Gallery). It had also been seen in the 18th century in pictures like "The Age of Innocence" (Tate Britain) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was much admired by Millais.

The interpretation of childhood changed radically after Freud wrote about it as a troubled period of latent sexuality, but it would be unhistorical to expect Millais to reflect these ideas in his work. The painting was brought from Millais by Sir William Ingram, proprietor of the Illustrated London News, a popular magazine with a wide circulation. Ingram also bought the copyright from the artist. He published "Bubbles" as a special presentation color print with the Christmas number of the magazine in 1887. (Other paintings of children by Millais had been published with previous Christmas numbers with great success.) Before its appearance in the magazine, the painting with its copyright was sold to A & F Pears, manufacturers of Pears soap. The Managing Director of Pears, Thomas Barrett, was a pioneer of modern advertising methods, and he and William Lever of Lever Brothers, makers of Sunlight Soap, were great rivals, each spending vast sums on promoting their brands. Barrett turned "Bubbles" into an advertisement by adding a bar of soap in the foreground. Millais was furious, but he could do nothing about it. Millais was unfairly criticised for degrading his art, but as the copyright owner, Barrett was within his rights.

And the use of the painting for advertising meant that the picture became the best known of all his works. Lever responded to Barrett's initiative in 1889 by purchasing "The New Frock" by Frith and using this to advertise Sunlight Soap, again without the artist's permission. Frith's painting and others used for Sunlight Soap advertising, are now part of the Lady Lever Art Gallery collection. In 1914 Lever Brothers acquired A & F Pears, and subsequently the company became part of the Unilever Group. Pears was retained as a separate brand and the company kept 'Bubbles' at its head office. It was recently on loan to the Royal Academy in London, and has now been transferred on long loan to the Lady Lever Art Gallery where it joins an already strong group of the artist's works. The painting on the box is framed with a gold line; the box's sides are decorated with two parallel gold lines. The box is constructed from paper-mache. Black lacquer is used to paint the exterior of the box while red lacquer completes the interior of the work. A hinge is fastened to the left of the portrait, and the box rests on a flat bottom.

The work is signed with the artist's name-. Reviews "Millais": Review of the 2007-8 Exhibition at Tate Britain "Millais": Review of the 2007-8 Exhibition at Tate Britain Antoine Capet , FRHistS, Professor and Head of British Studies at the University of Rouen [ Home —> Visual Arts —> Painting —> Pre-Raphaelites —> John Everett Millais (1829-96) —> Reviews of books and exhibitions ] This review originally appeared on H-Net (Humanities and Social Sciences Online) , and has been adapted and reformatted for our website, and illustrated, by Jacqueline Banerjee . [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL or credit the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the images to enlarge them, and for more information where available.] Introduction Ophelia, by John Everett Millais (1851).

Past visitors to the Tate Gallery , as it was then known, will be familiar with the archetypal Millais which seems to be on permanent display, Ophelia, "the most popular painting at Tate Britain." Indeed, such is the association between Millais, Ophelia and the Tate that this painting provides the cover photograph for the useful booklet given to visitors, for the Press pack and also for the accompanying catalogue — besides forming the background to the Exhibition poster. Naturally, there is more to Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) than Ophelia (1851), and Tate Britain has organized a long-awaited retrospective, the first since 1967 (at the Royal Academy) and, the Press release indicates, "the first exhibition since 1898 to examine the entirety of the artist's career" — notably because it includes a large group of his late Scottish landscapes. It is naturally impossible to discuss here all the 140 paintings and works on paper which are featured, but the exemplary website pages devoted to the Exhibition give illustrations of all the major works displayed, with excellent explanatory notes.

Millais and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Left: Christ in the House of His Parents (1849-50). Right: Lorenzo and Isabella, or just Isabella (1848-49). Not unexpectedly, the first room concentrates on Pre-Raphaelitism , since the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house in 1848. Among the other future celebrities present were William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti . If Pre-Raphaelitism can best be described in opposition to Academicism or, as the Minneapolis Institute of Arts defines it on its website, a "style which advocated a return to serious subjects and naturalistic representation, and emphasized accuracy of detail and color", then the precocious work of Millais did not adumbrate his future Pre-Raphaelite militancy. The Exhibition has a magnificently Academic Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru (1846 — admittedly painted when he was only sixteen). Technically, the first painting to be explicitly presented in the context of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was Isabella (1848–9).

Together with Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's Shop) (1849-50), these paintings established Millais's reputation as a provocateur, the former because of its overt rejection of Academicism, the latter for reasons which ring all sorts of familiar bells today. The more bigoted Protestants saw the scene as having inacceptable Roman Catholic tendencies and the general religiosity of the time was averse to realistic depiction of Jesus Christ. With The Eve of St Agnes (1850) and Mariana (1850-1), Millais deliberately infringed the conventions of the time by associating erotic desire with "respectable women." The superb contemporary portraits shown (Portrait of a Gentleman and his Grandchild (James Wyatt and his Granddaughter, Mary Wyatt), 1849; Mrs James Wyatt Jr and her Daughter Sarah, 1850; Thomas Combe, 1850) apparently did little to compensate for the scandalous nature of his other works — and yet, paradoxically, the Royal Academy never refused to exhibit them. Millais: "Romance and Modern Genre" Left: The Black Brunswicker (1860).

Right: The Blind Girl (1856). Room 2, on "Romance and Modern Genre" is largely devoted to his next field of exploration, that of figure painting with a historical dimension, often depicting the conflict between love and patriotic or religious duty. We thus have A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day, refusing to shield himself from Danger by wearing the Roman Catholic Badge (1851-2, on the massacre of French Protestants by Roman Catholic mobs on 24 August 1572); The Order of Release, 1746 (1852-3, on the last Jacobite Rebellion); The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 (1852-3, on the English Civil War); Peace Concluded, 1856 (1856, on the ending of the Crimean War); The Escape of a Heretic, 1559 (1857, on the Spanish Holy Inquisition); and The Black Brunswicker (1859-60, on the Battle of Waterloo).

Only six years separate The Order of Release, 1746 from Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru, and yet these two "historical scenes" are light-years apart — or so they appear to be to the non-specialist of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Room 2 also contains the well known picture of The Blind Girl (1854-6), in all its glorious colour (the girl's red hair!), impossible to render even with the best modern techniques of reproduction. Millais and Aestheticism Left: Spring (1856-9). Right: The Vale of Rest (Where the weary find repose) (1858). Aestheticism. The curators (Alison Smith, Curator at Tate Britain, and Jason Rosenfeld, Associate Professor at Marymount Manhattan College, New York) explain their choice of this term in a very convincing wall text. Millais's evolution is perfectly encapsulated in the difference which one perceives between Spring (1856-9), with its arguably archetypal characteristics of Pre-Raphaelitism, and The Vale of Rest (Where the weary find repose) (1858).

We are therefore not surprised to see the continuation of this evolution towards "The Grand Tradition" in the next room, with classical Biblical subjects (and also with a tendency to classical treatment?) like Esther (1863-5) or Jephthah (1867). Fortunately, the curators provide their modern de-Christianised visitors with the essential information on these Old Testament subjects — but few members of the public seemed to be interested. In contrast, the two assassinated sons of Edward IV in The Princes in the Tower (1878) continue to speak to the crowds (it was hardly possible to approach some of the pictures, let alone the captions, when I was there — this is of course the ambivalent ransom of success for all museum authorities). The patriotic scenes, The Boyhood of Raleigh (1869-70) and The North-West Passage (1874), do not arouse the same enthusiasm as when they were first exhibited. We must bear the Imperial context in mind: Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877 as the culmination of Disraeli's efforts to revive interest in the Empire, largely neglected by his Liberal rivals.

Few visitors today will look at these pictures with the Imperial pride which they both assumed and enhanced. That the former young rebels of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood now appeared as supporters of the Conservative Imperial dream was of course highly ironical. Millais' Fancy Pictures Bubbles (1865-66). As a total contrast to his "Imperialist" pictures, Millais produced the "Fancy Pictures" of Room 5. A wall text conveniently explains what the phrase means in art history: "The 'fancy picture' first came into existence during the eighteenth century and can be described as genre painting where the sentiment takes precedence over evolved narrative." The archetypal work in this category is the celebrated Bubbles (1866). The original was not often seen until recently, but it is now on long loan to the Lady Lever Art Gallery , whose website usefully retraces the history of the painting, indirectly explaining why Millais was blamed for his commercialism (one more inexcusable sin for the idealists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of his young days): Bubbles will be forever linked with washing and cleanliness because it was used to advertise Pears' soap.

Owner of the painting Unilever has granted the Lady Lever a long-term loan. In many people's minds the painting is also associated with the song "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," anthem of Cup Finalists West Ham FC since the 1920s when the song was a hit. Painted by Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais in 1886 and his best-known work, Bubbles was originally called A Child's World. It shows the artist's grandson William James dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy-style velvet costume with a ruffled collar. The painting was bought by A. and F. Pears and the managing director, Thomas Barrett, turned it into an advertisement by adding a bar of soap in the foreground. It was a brilliant masterstroke and the painting is today still associated with the product. Lever Brothers acquired A & F Pears in 1914 and subsequently the company became part of the Unilever Group. Pears was retained as a separate brand and Unilever kept Bubbles at its global headquarters on the banks of the Thames. Millais' Portraits Left: The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, MP (1885).

Right: Portrait of the Painter (1880). Entering the impressively large Room 6, one is immediately fascinated by the reconstruction of Millais's studio, including the actual 18th century armchair used by his wealthy sitters and his large studio easel (his palette, brushes and oils are also on display). This is the room devoted to the "Portraits" which made him a very rich man — and one understands why when one sees that it features two Prime Ministers (The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, MP, 1878-9 and Benjamin Disraeli, The Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, 1881); a banker's daughter and marchioness (The Marchioness of Huntly, 1870); a banker's wife (Mrs.

Bischoffsheim, 1872-3); a fashionable actor (Henry Irving, Esq, 1883); a future successful actress (A Jersey Lily [Lillie Langtry]; 1877-8) and two famous authors (Thomas Carlyle, 1877, and Alfred Tennyson, 1881) besides his self-portrait (Portrait of the Painter, 1880, commissioned by the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, to be hung in its Collezione degli Autoritratti next to Velázquez, Bernini and Dürer) and those of his wife and some of his children. Millais' Late Landscapes Dew-drenched Furze (1890): one of Millais's remarkable late Highland landscapes. Few people must have seen the originals of the twelve paintings of the Highlands of Perthshire which form the theme of the final room, "The Late Landscapes," because they are widely dispersed.

If Scotch Firs: "The silence that is in the lonely woods" (1873, a quotation from Wordsworth) arguably reminds the viewer of Millais's Pre-Raphaelite manner, the caption of "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" (1892, a quotation from As You Like It) informs us that it is "one of the artist's rare paintings dealing with contemporary social ills" (a man abandoning his family). And when the caption of the stupendously gorgeous large painting, The Sound of Many Waters (1876) tells us that "in this mature work he effectively conveyed the features of volcanic rock without the meticulousness of Pre-Raphaelitism," we wonder what the result would have been if he had displayed "the meticulousness of Pre-Raphaelitism." The free visitor's booklet [had] a map of the locations (near the River Tay) where these landscapes were painted — an excellent idea. References "Artwork Highlights — Bubbles by Sir John Everett Millais." National Museums Liverpool. Web. 6 April 2014. [Note: this entry differs somewhat from the one quoted above.] Millais: Tate Britain: Exhibition . Web.

6 April 2014. Rosenfeld, Jason and Alison Smith. Millais. London : Tate, 2007. 272 pp. ISBN: 1854376675 (pbk.); 1854377469 (hbk.) (exhibition catalogue, shown right). Fedoskino. Russian Lacquer Art Gallery Description: This beautiful box is an exceptional creation of talented Fedoskino artist, Yevgeniy Dokuchaev. The world-known composition " Bubbles" painted in 1885-86 by John Everett Millais inspired Dokuchaev to create this work. John Everett Millais(1829- 1896) was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator. He was born in Southampton, England in 1829, of a prominent Jersey-based family. His prodigious artistic talent won him a place at the Royal Academy schools at the unprecedented age of eleven. His early works were painted with great attention to detail, often concentrating on the beauty and complexity of the natural world.

By the 1870s Millais was the most successful artist in Britain, earning an impressive £30,000 annually and gaining international stature through exposure at a succession of World's Fairs. One of the most famous paintings by the Victorian artist Sir John Millais has been placed on long loan at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. It has been lent by Unilever. "Bubbles" was painted in 1885-6. It shows a boy blowing bubbles with a pipe and a bowl of soap suds. The boy was the artist's grandson, Willie James, aged about four: he later became an Admiral. To get round the problems of painting the bubbles, the artist had a glass sphere specially manufactured. Millais originally titled his painting "A Child's World" but it was later changed to "Bubbles". As a young man, Millais was one of the chief artists in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which set out to attack the complacency of the Royal Academy. He painted masterpieces such as "Isabella" (Walker Art Gallery) and "Ophelia" (Tate Britain) in a new style with bright colors, wiry outlines and minute detail.

By the time he painted "Bubbles", Millais was in his 50s. He had abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style and had adopted darker colors and looser brushwork. No longer a rebel, he had joined the Royal Academy and had become a pillar of the art establishment. Much of his work at this stage in his career featured sentimental portrayals of small children. Other examples, at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, are "Little Speedwell's Darling Blue" and "The Nest". Although "Bubbles" may appear sentimental to modern taste, it has a serious meaning. Millais was using a symbol with a long tradition behind it. "Bubbles" are fragile and have a brief moment of beauty before they burst. In the 17th century Dutch artists painted children blowing bubbles to convey the brevity of human life, the transience of beauty and the inevitability of death. This theme appealed to Millais and is a key to several other of his paintings, such as "Spring (Apple Blossoms)" also at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Amongst the beauty of the young girls and the spring flowers in this picture, Millais painted a scythe, to indicate that beauty fades and that death awaits us all.

This aspect of "Bubbles" was not obvious to the Victorians. Victorian artists associated childhood with sweetness and innocence. The attitude is seen in the book illustrations of Kate Greenaway and in historical pictures such as "And when did you last see your Father?" by W. F. Yeames (Walker Art Gallery). It had also been seen in the 18th century in pictures like "The Age of Innocence" (Tate Britain) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was much admired by Millais. The interpretation of childhood changed radically after Freud wrote about it as a troubled period of latent sexuality, but it would be unhistorical to expect Millais to reflect these ideas in his work. The painting was brought from Millais by Sir William Ingram, proprietor of the Illustrated London News, a popular magazine with a wide circulation. Ingram also bought the copyright from the artist. He published "Bubbles" as a special presentation color print with the Christmas number of the magazine in 1887. (Other paintings of children by Millais had been published with previous Christmas numbers with great success.) Before its appearance in the magazine, the painting with its copyright was sold to A & F Pears, manufacturers of Pears soap.

The Managing Director of Pears, Thomas Barrett, was a pioneer of modern advertising methods, and he and William Lever of Lever Brothers, makers of Sunlight Soap, were great rivals, each spending vast sums on promoting their brands. Barrett turned "Bubbles" into an advertisement by adding a bar of soap in the foreground. Millais was furious, but he could do nothing about it. Millais was unfairly criticised for degrading his art, but as the copyright owner, Barrett was within his rights. And the use of the painting for advertising meant that the picture became the best known of all his works. Lever responded to Barrett's initiative in 1889 by purchasing "The New Frock" by Frith and using this to advertise Sunlight Soap, again without the artist's permission. Frith's painting and others used for Sunlight Soap advertising, are now part of the Lady Lever Art Gallery collection. In 1914 Lever Brothers acquired A & F Pears, and subsequently the company became part of the Unilever Group. Pears was retained as a separate brand and the company kept 'Bubbles' at its head office.

It was recently on loan to the Royal Academy in London, and has now been transferred on long loan to the Lady Lever Art Gallery where it joins an already strong group of the artist's works. The painting on the box is framed with a gold line; the box's sides are decorated with two parallel gold lines. The box is constructed from paper-mache. Black lacquer is used to paint the exterior of the box while red lacquer completes the interior of the work. A hinge is fastened to the left of the portrait, and the box rests on a flat bottom. The work is signed with the artist's name-. Meet the Don Draper of Guerrilla Marketing | TakePart Meet the Don Draper of Guerrilla Marketing Before sponsored content there was ‘The Blair Witch Project.’ (Photo: YouTube) Jan 29, 2015· 6 MIN READ Kyle Chayka is a writer for publications including Newsweek, The Guardian, and Pacific Standard. Bio In the grainy, black-and-white video footage, a terrified movie crew runs from something in the woods, their handheld camera shaking frantically.

This was followed by a trickle of other videos and news briefings that appeared on early Internet forums during the summer of 1999, amping up the hysteria—was there a witch in the Maryland woods hunting down film students? Sixteen years after its premiere, there’s no question that The Blair Witch Project was a horror film and not a documentary, as its shadowy marketing suggested. But in the run-up to the movie’s release, as dial-up Internet users pored over the grainy snippets of video, there was a palpable sense that the horrors on screen might be real. Coproducer Mike Monello helped manufacture that mythology, which turned his $23,000 indie horror film into a $248 million smash hit worldwide. As the unlikely Don Draper of postmodern advertising, he was one of the first to reap the benfits of viral Internet content’s commercial potential. While collaborating on the movie with directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, Monello turned bits of Blair Witch’s phony “found” footage, with its chilling central narrative—the woods, the witch, the disappeared film students—into a viral sensation by carefully cultivating an online community long before anyone was trying to harness Internet fandoms for marketing purposes.

Aside from huge box-office numbers, Blair Witch also cemented his place as an icon of guerrilla marketing. Like the film, Monello’s promotional campaign played with the boundaries of truth and fiction to get its message across. But at the time, Monello didn’t see the tactic as guerilla marketing. And although he went on to found an ad agency, Campfire, based in large part on Blair Witch’s marketing success, Monello doesn’t think the same tactics could work again. We’re just months away from the release of Paranormal Activity 5, after all. And beyond “found footage” horror becoming a certifiable trope, there are countless other examples of cultural phenomena that are eventually revealed to be nothing more than marketing campaigns. We’ve become accustomed to finding such branded “content” all around us. So what would the Blair Witch of today look like? “I don’t think it looks like Blair Witch,” Monello said. We know that trick—which leaves marketers looking for new ways to target us. • • • Guerrilla marketing is an act of disguise.

“It’s an effort to advertise to people that doesn’t feel like advertising,” explained Michael Serazio, a professor at Fairfield University and the author of Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing. You may know it by other names—product placement, viral marketing, culture jamming, even online sponsored content—but Serazio says the fundamental idea is always the same: “The advertising message is like a guerrilla warrior, slipping across these boundaries that it used to be kept within.” This strategy works, the professor continued, because “audiences are reflexively cynical—we’ve been trained to spot the bullshit.” In the places where guerrilla marketing appears—online, in urban graffiti, or even in the mouths of friends recommending products—“the audience doesn’t have their bullshit detectors up.” The term itself was popularized in the 1980s by the late Jay Conrad Levinson, who worked at ad agencies including Leo Burnett and JWT on such iconic campaigns as the Marlboro Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Levinson’s book Guerrilla Marketing, first published in the early 1980s, has sold millions of copies and spawned dozens of sequels.

But advertising that goes after “conventional goals using unconventional means,” as Levinson once described guerilla marketing, isn’t all that new. In true ad man form, Levinson simply put a snappy name on an old idea. The true father of guerrilla marketing may have been Thomas J. Barratt, who joined the British Pears soap company in 1864. There, he pushed soap ads—and the advertising industry—in new directions. Barratt notably hired the first-ever paid female spokesperson, actor Lillie Langtry, and, more subversively, he imported 500,000 French coins and stamped them with “Pears Soap.” The coins circulated as British pennies, carrying the company’s message with them everywhere they went. French coins stamped with "Pear Soap." (Photo: Twitter) Barratt even acquired the iconic painting Bubbles by John Everett Millais for a marketing stunt. The work depicts an angelic child gazing up at a delicate soap bubble, and in a move reminiscent of the contemporary street artist Banksy , Barratt had a bar of Pears soap painted into the picture. The stunt piggybacked on the artwork’s power, putting advertising where none had expected it.

As advertising in mainstream media channels became big business over the early 20th century, marketers got clever. In the 1950s, soap operas were called that “because they were originally developed by detergent companies,” which created the shows as highly targeted vehicles for their ads, Serazio said. He also cited the paid-for addition of Reese’s Pieces to the 1982 movie E.T. as a landmark example—one of the first public instances of product placement in a mainstream movie. The practice has since become the status quo in media, from television to video games to rap songs. Reese's Pieces in the film E.T. (Photo: Youtube) These stunts have something in common: They intentionally confuse fact and fiction, art and message. They commodify spaces that aren’t usually seen as commodified—at least at the time. The danger of guerrilla marketing is that it might work once, but that doesn’t mean lightning will strike again. “On some level, advertising always wants to colonize the next frontier,” Serazio said. “But then that frontier burns itself out.

We’re used to advertising there, so it’s no longer effective.” • • • Monello’s miracle play for Blair Witch was to seed an online community—an early form—with shaky, spooky video footage that seemed real enough, leaving audiences to answer the question of its authenticity for themselves. After shooting on a shoestring budget, Monello and his team landed some of their edited tape on Bravo’s Split Screen, a niche show about moviemaking. The show teased viewers to go on its website and debate the mythology. The small site “all of a sudden got flooded with people who wanted to know more,” Monello said. When the burgeoning Blair Witch community started to become a distraction from the TV show, Bravo advised Morello and his team to do something groundbreaking: Invent their own digital forum. Oversized dragon skull placed on a beach for Game of Thrones viral marketing campaign. (Photo: Twitter) “Truthfully, at first putting up the site was a little bit of a burden, a distraction from the edit,” Monello said. But the activity soon became part of the filmmaking process. “We took part in discussion board, people came in, started speculating and asking questions about the mythology. We updated the site slowly,” he continued.

The fan community grew, and thanks to some well-placed radio call-ins, the film was accepted into Sundance, where it was met with unprecedented crowds—of locals, not Hollywood people. The project became subversive not only because it manipulated the truth, but because the marketing turned online fans into the film’s advocates. Rather than following the top-down model of most mainstream media at the time, Blair Witch built from the bottom up. Allowing audiences to participate in the film was revolutionary. “There was deep interaction there, and the audience was central,” Monello said. “It was much more like performance than it was like media.” “When I look at the early stuff that we were doing, that’s content marketing!” Monello said. “It doesn’t look like it, but that’s what it was.” A similar approach to advertising now drives much of the recent growth and investment in new media business. BuzzFeed, Vice, Gawker, and even Conde Nast have launched boutique studios to create custom-made ads that look as close to editorial content as possible.

Related The Father of Modern Advertising Rides Again - Print Magazine Print Magazine Staff + Contributors Close Enter your email to download PRINT's 2016 Year in Review—an overview of the most significant news and happenings from the design world in 2016. * By: Zachary Petit | June 27, 2014 As Thomas J. Barratt (1841–1914) once famously said: “Any fool can make soap. It takes a clever man to sell it.” And that’s exactly what Barratt, chairman of soap purveyor A&F Pears, did. (In fact, he did it so astoundingly well that “Pears” became a direct synonym for soap in his day.) There’s a fair amount of interesting tidbits tucked away around the internet about the man deemed “The Father of Modern Advertising.” But recently I happened upon an unexpected find: A copy of National Magazine: An Illustrated American Monthly, featuring an Esquire-ish profile of Barratt, detailing his personality, work, and influence on the field of advertising—published less than a year after he died in 1914. Mere months after his death, the impact of his work was already clear.

Here, he rides again in a new (old) timepiece, courtesy of the vintage pages of National. National Magazine: An Illustrated American Monthly Volume XLI: October, 1914, to March, 1915 “The ‘Father’ of Modern Advertising” by Mitchell Mannering WHEREVER the phrase, “Good morning, have you used Pears’ Soap?” is known—and that covers the territory of English-speaking communities throughout the world—the late Thomas J. Barratt, the “father of modern advertising,” has left an impress upon the times quite as notable in its way as any statesman of his day and generation. When in England I had the honor of meeting many distinguished men, but among all the charming and impressive personalities there lingers an indelible impression of the last afternoon I enjoyed with Thomas J. Barratt. As I entered 71-75 New Oxford Street I found on the lower floor a fountain playing amid statuary of famous note, while on the walls fine paintings gave the very entrance the artistic atmosphere reflected in the advertising of Pears. There was the original of that famous Millais’ painting, “Bubbles,” which has attracted world-wide attention.

Upstairs in an office room where the high desk at which the writer stood, or sat on a high stool, its surroundings reminding one that here still existed many of the traditional conventionalities of good old London, I met a tall, sturdy, energetic gentle man with a long white beard, bright blue eyes and a jovial manner, the first man to recognize the value of art in advertising. His welcome was the embodiment of all the good nature implied in the greeting, “Good morning,” and as we talked he showed me the advertisements of Pears Soap, including the one that appeared in 1650, when Roger Pears was manufacturing soap in London. The establishment, tip to the close of his career, was to him the joy and pride of his heart and life, so absorbed had he become in his great work of blending art and business. “Come along, let’s go to the Club in St. James Street,” said Mr. Barratt, and along we went and had one of those chats that reminded me of the day with John Ruskin. He talked philosophy and into that one evening of friendly converse he encompassed the story of fifty years of thought and labor more graphically and vividly than any story I have ever heard.

As we rode in the cab, his observations on different points of interest as we passed, his keen comments on the people in the streets of London which Dickens so vividly described, were like rereading the tales of Pickwick, while his estimate of the statesmen and legislators in the United States and Europe revealed a wide horizon of liberal observation. Mr. Barratt was especially fond of everything associated with the name and memory of Admiral Nelson, and when we drove by Trafalgar Square he stopped the carriage for another glimpse of the monument and to remark that he had in his library the original log from Nelson’s ship, “Victory.” Although an Englishman, he was a true cosmopolite and seemed to have obtained from his frequent visits to America a clarified conception and sympathetic appreciation of America and all its conditions from his perspective across the water. Like Rt. Hon. James Bryce, he appeared to understand American conditions and interests more lucidly and logically than we did ourselves, absorbed as we are in the whirlpool of everyday activities. Thomas J. Barratt was a student of human nature and insisted that his trips to America were always fruitful of ideas. He seemed to love to mingle with the Americans.

Henry Ward Beecher was one of his warmest friends and made a glowing tribute to Pears’ soap. Above all, he was human; his very handgrasp, his talk and actions reflected a personality democratic, yet unrelenting in contesting for his ideals. … In conversation Thomas J. Barratt displayed a fund of information and a broad grasp of world affairs that would have done credit to any man in public life. Although he was never in politics, he is one of the few strangers who was ever on the floor of the House of Commons. He was there at the time Mr. Gladstone was speaking on the Home Rule bill and delighted to tell of the stirring scenes of that event, when they tried to eject him. The story of Thomas J. Barratt’s life is the oft-told story of an indomitable personality that despite handicaps and obstacles impressed itself on his times through what he achieved as well as conceived. He was one of the first to appreciate that the genius of the age was business, and he devoted his life to the dominant genius of his day and generation. Mr. Barratt was born in London in 1841 and educated in a private school in the north of London.

His first position was that of a traveler for Pears, and thus he came in contact with the trade. In 1865, at the age of twenty-four, he went into partnership with Mr. Andrew Pears, the great-grandson of the original Mr. Pears, and always had a reverence for the remarkable history and tradition of the house with which he was associated. The founder of the firm making Pears’ Soap was Andrew Pears, a Cornishman, who began life as a barber apprentice, traveling about as a journeyman barber, finally locating in London as a perfumer in Greek Street, Soho. He was an experimental chemist and a specialist in the making of dyes, and one of his earliest ambitions was to make a pure soap, and it was in the year of the stirring events of the revolution that he made the soap of today. When the centenary of the foundation of the house of Pears was celebrated in 1889, Mr. Barratt was given a banquet by the press of the world, which was altogether a notable event and was graced by the presence of the Lord Mayor and distinguished citizens of Great Britain and America.

One could not use Pears’ Soap without taking cognizance of the campaign of exploitation, in which the article and its advertising seemed closely allied. … A worldwide product, suitable to the Arctic Circle no less than to the tropics, no wonder with such a product Mr. Barratt said “good morning” to the world! He was a tireless preacher of that which was next to godliness—an evangel of the gospel of soap and water, and was proud of it. There was nothing in the realm of possibilities for advertising that he did not investigate. He helped to pioneer the construction of the great pyramids of modern advertising appropriations, and emblazoned Pears’ Soap indelibly and for all time in the history of his times. He was one of the first to forecast the possibilities of modern advertising, and although there was bitter opposition on the part of conservative English customers, he persisted and prevailed. He was enthusiastic in the development of advertising, and was always ready to praise the development of American advertising, even though some of his own plans were boldly imitated and utilized. Much of the copy which has made famous the name of Pears was prepared by Mr. Barratt personally.

He very seldom used the word “soap” in the advertising—he used the word “Pears.” He began writing the ads in the days of the quill pen, and he often told the story of how as a boy he saw some apples in a window, went home and painted an illustration card calling attention to the virtues of the apples, and traded the idea and sketch to the shopkeeper for apples, which he did not have money to buy. He humorously declared that he began by advertising apples and ended by advertising “pears.” The story of Pears was a romance, and it appealed to the broad and virile imagination of the young man who was to control the wonderful advertising destinies of Pears’ Soap with the genius of an author or artist. A budget passing fifteen million dollars was expended in advertising under his direction, and into the articles and advertisements of Pears’ Soap he put the literature of the times. Like William Morris, he sought for the expression of art in the world of commerce and was successful. It was Rt. Hon. William E.

Gladstone who furnished him a priceless advertisement by speaking in the House of Commons about the multiplying Home Rule amendments being “as plentiful as advertisements of Pears’ Soap.” He secured Sir John Millais’ picture of his little nephew blowing soap bubbles for eleven thousand dollars, and made the picture famous throughout the world, by placing millions of copies in circulation. This was followed with other paintings that have become equally famous, and he even utilized a caricature in Putich and originated another phrase known worldwide, “since first they discovered Pears’ Soap they have used no other.” This was utilized in the picture of Punch showing a dirty tramp out at elbows writing his testimonial, “Two years ago I used your soap; since then I have used no other.” This was a dash of humor characteristic of the man who used French copper coins and stamped them with the word “Pears,” and put them in circulation. Everybody was soon talking about the Pears’ pennies until the government had to withdraw them from circulation entirely. Pears’ Annual is looked for eagerly every Christmas for its beautiful pictures. Pears’ Encyclopedia has carried information to millions of homes, and was a phase of his library games in advertising.

In the highways of civilization in all parts of the world, the message of Pears’ Soap is found, the result of the indomitable genius of Thomas J. Barratt. He was the pioneer of gigantic advertising, and his work left an impress in the hearts of the people. The man who said “Good morning” to the whole world has passed on, but his work lives after him, an enduring monument to a rugged personality that was worldwide in its influence. If I were to make a record of the men of genius in the times in which I live, the name of Thomas J. Barratt would appear far up on the list. A record of the nobility I have known would include the name of Mr. Thomas J. Barratt, for it always seemed to me that if ever there was a man entitled to the peerage in England for what he achieved in the betterment of industrial conditions and making the world happier, it was Thomas J. Barratt, who was long ago knighted by the people as the peer of Pears, and even in his passing we cannot say “good night”—it was always “good morning” with the host at [his estate,] “Bell Moor.”

Question: Who painted "Bubbles" in I 886, the picture used to advertise Pears soap?
Answer: JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS