William James (Royal Navy officer, born 1881) sat as a subject for several paintings by his grandfather, Millais. The most well-known of these is "Bubbles", in which the five-year-old William is shown gazing enraptured at a bubble he has just blown. When the painting was used in an advertisement for Pears soap, it became famous. The image dogged James throughout his life, and he was regularly nicknamed "Bubbles". James pursued a career in the Royal Navy, rising to hold a number of important positions. Following early service on the training ship HMS "Britannia", he was confirmed in the rank of sub-lieutenant on 15 April 1901. He was
Isabella (Millais painting) Isabella (Millais painting) Isabella (1849), also known as Lorenzo and Isabella, is a painting by John Everett Millais, which was his first work in the Pre-Raphaelite style, created shortly after the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the previous year. It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, and is now in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The painting illustrates an episode from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron novel "Lisabetta e il testo di bassilico" (1349 - 1353), reprised by John Keats's poem, "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil", which describes the relationship between Isabella, the