History of advertising in Britain day and into the 20th century. An advertising tactic that he used was to associate the Pears brand with high culture and quality. Most famously, he used the painting "Bubbles" by John Everett Millais as an advertisement by adding a bar of Pears soap into the foreground. (Millais protested at this alteration of his work, but in vain as Barratt had bought the copyright.) Barratt continued this theme with a series of adverts of well groomed middle-class children, associating Pears with domestic comfort and aspirations of modern cleanliness. Barratt established "Pears Annual" in 1891 as a spin-off magazine which promoted
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)