I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles was adopted by West Ham's supporters in the late 1920s and is now one of the most recognisable club anthems in English football along with the similarly adopted "You'll Never Walk Alone", "Blue Moon", "Blue is the Colour" and "Blaydon Races". "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" was introduced to the club by former manager Charlie Paynter in the late twenties. A player, Billy J. "Bubbles" Murray who played for the local Park School had a resemblance to the boy in the "Bubbles" painting by Millais used in a Pears soap commercial of the time. Headmaster Cornelius Beal began singing the tune
Isabella (Millais painting) violently kicks a frightened dog while cracking a nut. Millais and his colleague William Holman Hunt had both produced drawings illustrating episodes from the poem, but only Millais worked his up into a full painting (Hunt's 1868 "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" used a completely different composition). Both drawings used distorted perspective and angular poses characteristic of medieval art, by which the Pre-Raphaelites were influenced. Millais also draws on the precedent of William Hogarth's satirical depictions of an arranged marriage "Marriage à-la-mode". The painting is structured with deliberately distorted perspective, elongating the right hand side of the table and