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
Mariana (Millais) is on the floor towards the bottom right corner is a detail that Millais took from Tennyson's poem: "the mouse behind the mouldering wainscots shriek'd or from the crevice peer'd about". Together, Millais' painting and Tennyson's poem create an intriguing storyline for the reader to follow. Mariana (Millais) Mariana is an 1851 oil-on-wood painting by John Everett Millais. The image is based on the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure", written between 1601 and 1606. In the play, Mariana was to be married, but was rejected when her dowry was lost in a shipwreck. Her story was retold