John Guille Millais ( , also ; 24 March 1865 – 24 March 1931) was a British artist, naturalist, gardener and travel writer who specialised in wildlife and flower portraiture. He travelled extensively around the world in the late Victorian period detailing wildlife often for the first time. He is noted for illustrations that are of a particularly exact nature.
Early life
John Guille Millais was the fourth son and seventh child of Sir John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter, and his wife Effie Gray. John was raised in London and Perthshire with a wide interest in natural history, which embraced horticulture, hunting including big game hunting and wildfowl. As a boy he made a collection of birds shot around the coast of Scotland later recounted in his book "The Wildfowler in Scotland". This formed the basis of a lifetime collection of around 3,000 specimens that he later housed in a private museum in Horsham in West Sussex, England. Specimens from this collection were depicted by his father in his painting The Ruling Passion (also known as The Ornithologist). John Guille himself painted a bird in his father's painting Dew-Drenched Furze.
Working life
Millais began his career in the army with the Seaforth Highlanders, but after six years he resigned to travel the world. His was clearly a wanderlust based on a desire to see, record and paint the natural world. To this end he travelled widely in Europe, Africa and North America. In the New World in the 1880s/90s he explored Canada and Newfoundland and helped map uncharted areas of Alaska.
In 1903 Millais co-founded the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire (SPWFE). Clearly a clubbable and convivial man in 1909 Millais was a founder member of the Shikar Club, a sportsclub where like-minded associates could dine and discuss their passion for hunting especially big game hunting. Millais was passionate about hunting and fellow members included the famous hunters Frederick Selous (the brother of ornithologist Edmund Selous) and explorer and hunter Frank Wallace. The club still survives and included Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh amongst its members until his death in 2021.
After World War I broke out in 1914, Millais was taken into the secret service of the Royal Navy in Norway and in Iceland. As he later explained in his autobiographical book Wanderings and Memories, he was involved in counter-espionage, provided with the rank of Lieutenant-Commander and was appointed British Vice-Counsul at Hammerfest in northern Norway where he stayed until 1917. In August 1915 he met with two German spies at Christiania, and travelled with them to Lofoten. He was engaged in setting up and supporting a network of counter espionage. The importance of Norway to the war effort was that the northern seas provided a route for food and materials to reach British ports. Millais reported from Norway that whilst the Norwegian authorities were generally pro British, much of the population were pro German. In December 1917 he was nearly captured by the Germans but with the help of a harbour master he managed to get out of Norway, returning to Newcastle.
After the War, Millais wrote and published a book on his life and hunting exploits in Africa and Scotland. Wanderings and Memories chronicled his passion for big game hunting and his fondness for the Scotland of his childhood. It contains a chapter from Millais' close friend, African game hunter Arthur Henry Neumann. This book went to several reprints including an American edition renamed A Sportsman's Wanderings. In 1921 he travelled with his son Raoul Millais to the southern Sudan and mapped for the first time large areas of Bahr al Ghazal, an exploit which led to a book on the Upper Nile, Far Away Up The Nile, published in 1924.
Artistic career
Millais is one of the most respected of British ornithologists and bird artists, producing between 1890 and 1914 a series of books on birds and other natural history subjects. In the study of ornithology he was renowned for his portraiture of wildfowl and game birds, the subjects of his three most famous works: Natural History of British Feeding Ducks; British Diving Ducks and British Game Birds. They rank amongst the finest work on wildfowl ever published. Each bird receives individual treatment in text and detailed chromolithographs, some of which are by his friend and pre-eminent bird artist of the day Archibald Thorburn (1860–1935). Each species is represented by two or three individuals on a plate drawn in attitudes of feeding, resting and courtship.