Ruskin had persistently put off consummating the marriage. When she met John Everett Millais five years later, Gray was still a virgin. Her brother, among others, later said that Ruskin was deliberately encouraging the friendship in order to compromise her, as an excuse to separate. One of the troops, Lieutenant Charles Paulizza, made friends with Gray, apparently with no objection from Ruskin. In particular, he made a point of drawing the Ca' d'Oro and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), because he feared they would soon be destroyed by the occupying Austrian troops. For Gray, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise while Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. Gray and Ruskin's different personalities were thrown into sharp relief by their contrasting priorities. This caused her to develop a severe phobia of the place, keeping her from attending her son's wedding to Gray. In 1817, Ruskin's mother, Margaret, during her engagement to Ruskin's father, had stayed at Bowerswell and was witness to three tragic deaths within its walls in quick succession (Ruskin's grandmother, grandfather, and newborn cousin). It had, coincidentally, previously been the home of Ruskin's paternal grandparents. While in Perth, Scotland, they lived at Bowerswell, the Gray family home, and site of their wedding. During their honeymoon, they travelled to Venice, where Ruskin was doing research for his book The Stones of Venice. She ended up marrying Ruskin, after an initially unsteady courtship, when she was 19 years old on 10 April 1848. ![]() Gray's family knew Ruskin's father and encouraged a match between the two when she had matured. John Ruskin wrote the fantasy story The King of the Golden River for Gray in 1841, when she was 12 and he was 21. Her sisters Sophie and Alice often modelled for John Everett Millais. ![]() Though she was given the pet-name "Phemy" by her parents as a child, she started to be known as "Effie" by the time she was a teenager. She grew up at Bowerswell, an Italianate-style house near the foot of Kinnoull Hill. This famous Victorian " love triangle" has been dramatised in plays, films, and an opera.Įuphemia Chalmers Gray was born on in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland to lawyer and businessman George Gray (1798–1877) and Sophia Margaret (1808–1894), daughter of Andrew Jameson, Sheriff-substitute of Fife. She had previously been married to the art critic John Ruskin, but she left him with the marriage never having been consummated it was subsequently annulled. Euphemia Chalmers Millais, Lady Millais ( née Gray – 23 December 1897) was a Scottish artists' model and the wife of Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.
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