John Ruskin's interest in 'natural ornament', the use of plant and animal forms in decorative design, interested the young John Millais, who was very much Ruskin's protégé.
To illustrate Ruskin's lectures on architecture and painting, Millais produced a number of drawings on this theme during the summer holiday of 1853, spent together at Glenfinlas in the Scottish Highlands (see British Museum Collection). This proved to be a fateful trip, as Millais fell in love with Ruskin's unhappy wife Effie (depicted in this sketch wearing imagined 'natural' jewellery). After an annulment of her marriage to Ruskin, she and Millais married in 1855.
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