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
John Guille Millais embraced horticulture, hunting including big game hunting and wildfowl. As a boy he made a collection of birds shot around the Perthshire coast of Scotland where he spent much of his childhood. 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". Millais began his career in the army with the Seaforth