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
The North-West Passage was promoting at the time. The female figure was a professional model, Mrs Ellis, who was later used in another painting, "Stitch, Stitch, Stitch" (1876). The right side of the painting originally depicted two of the sailor's grandchildren, who were modelled by John and Alice Millais, two of Millais' own children. They were shown looking at a globe of the world. But after Millais completed the painting, he became unhappy with the figures of the children, thinking that they distracted the eye from the main figure. He cut out this section of the painting and replaced it with a screen,