Dew-Drenched Furze

This late landscape is a visionary evocation of nature. Within a symmetrical composition and vertical format, light filters through the trees. According to his son JG Millais, Millais's inspiration was 'the potent voice of the wood spirits'. Millais's title comes from Tennyson's 'In Memoriam A.H.H.', 1850, written in response to the early death of the poet's friend Arthur Hallam. Millais may also have shared Tennyson's opinion that, though a work may be inspired by personal experience, its emotions are universal: '"I" is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him'.