Millais was such a bad boy that even today his work has to be banned from public display in Japan because its corrupting influence might lead to Japanese schoolgirls committing suicide. Posters of Ophelia were taken down recently from the Tokyo underground lest too many Japanese school girls be moved to kill themselves.
In his day he was the no.1 artistic rebel of the time. Having stolen Ruskin's wife, having had her declare her husband “incurably impotent”, Millais found himself facing some poetic justice: He still had to finish the portrait of Ruskin which had brought him together with Effie in the first place.
It had been in the process of painting Ruskin that Millais had grown close to Effie, and now with Ruskin humiliated, the portrait still needed to be completed, the fee had been paid and the work was due.
With Millais continuing to work on the portrait, Ruskin maintained his standard attitude of curious remoteness. The painting finally finished, Ruskin wrote Millais a graceful letter praising the paintings “wonderment”, but Millais responded with a letter stating, “I can scarcely see how you conceive it possible that I can desire to continue on terms of intimacy with you.”
