" The Black Brunswicker " - 1860 By John Everett Millais ( 1829 - 1896 ) | ArtLiveAndBeauty

" The Black Brunswicker " - 1860 By John Everett Millais

The Black Brunswick Hussar is one of the most renowned works by John Everett Millais, an English Pre-Raphaelite painter. It shows a scene from the Napoleonic Wars, with a hussar officer from the Brunswick Corps bidding farewell to his sweetheart at the Duchess of Richmond dance before heading to likely death in the Battle of Quatre Bras. This brutal combat elevated the Brunswick Black Corps, but nearly all of the troops and officers died in it.

John Everett Millais's painting depicts just the scenario of an officer of the Black Corps bidding farewell to his young girlfriend, who is dressed in a ball gown. He is already dressed for war and has a headpiece with a silver stripe in the shape of a dead head in his hand (the uniform headdress of the Brunswickers). Yet the girl is not ready to let go of her beloved; she appears to believe that this is their final meeting; it is known that few Brunswickers survived the fight. A crimson ribbon on her sleeve turns red as a sign of the blood that will be spilt in the near future. As the officer is already opening the door, and the girl clings to her sweetheart, displaying her affection and devotion in one final attempt to keep him. There is another character in the painting who is also near the leaving Person - this is a tiny dog standing on her hind legs - she also pleads him not to leave, and she is tied with a red bow, exactly like the girl. In general, the color red was a sign of resistance against the invader in many military formations, but here it is a symbol of impending loss, a symbol of eternal separation.

Despite the simplicity of the arrangement, there is one place in John Everett Millais's painting that has sparked much debate among art historians. He brushes up to David's Napoleon painting on the wall. Was this image a hint that the girl had a secret crush on the invader, whom her beloved was about to fight? How intense her anguish is right now! Is the image shown here as a sign of hatred for the opponent and a burning desire to beat him? Yet the adversary is still powerful and will not give up - after all, John Everett Millais picked this specific image of Napoleon confidently riding a horse on the St. Bernard Pass by coincidence. One thing is certain: the portrait on the wall is not an accident, because the Pre-Raphaelites never put anything on their paintings by chance.

John Everett Millais sat for a highly renowned girl for the painting "Black Brunswick" - Kate Perugini, an artist and the daughter of the famous English novelist Charles Dickens. The young man's identity has not been preserved, but there is evidence that he is a real hussar whose life was cut short shortly after the Painting was finished. Then an involuntary notion about a person's fate arises: after all, the hero for whom this young guy posed, an officer of the Brunswick Corps, most likely perished shortly after the artist caught the painting.

" The Black Brunswicker " - 1860 By John Everett Millais  ( 1829 - 1896 )