John Everett Millais Millais's interest in subjects connected to Britain's history and expanding empire. Millais also achieved great popularity with his paintings of children, notably "Bubbles" (1886) – famous, or perhaps notorious, for being used in the advertising of "Pears soap" – and "Cherry Ripe". His last project (1896) was to be a painting entitled "The Last Trek." Based on his illustration for his son's book, it depicted a white hunter lying dead in the African veldt, his body contemplated by two Africans. His many landscape paintings of this period usually depict difficult or dangerous terrain. The first of these, "Chill October" (1870)
John Everett Millais Hereditary Title. After the death of Lord Leighton in 1896, Millais was elected President of the Royal Academy. He died later in the same year from throat cancer. He was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral. Additionally, between 1881 and 1882, Millais was elected and acted as the president of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. When Millais died in 1896, the Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII) chaired a memorial committee which commissioned a statue of the artist. This was installed at the front of the National Gallery of British Art (now Tate Britain)