Sophia (Sophy) Margaret Gray (October 1843-15 March 1882), later Sophy Caird, was a Scottish-born model for her brother-in-law, the pre-Raphaelite painter, John Everett Millais. She was the younger sister of Euphemia (Effie) Gray, who married Millais in 1855 after the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin.
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Sophy[1] Gray was born in October 1843. Her parents were George Gray (1798–1877), a Scottish businessman, and Sophia Margaret Gray, née Jameson (1808–1894). Sophy was the tenth of fifteen children, although five, including three daughters, pre-deceased her. Two of her three elder brothers alive in 1843 died before she was seven. Effie (1828–1897) was the eldest child. The Grays’ second daughter, also named Sophia Margaret, died aged six in 1841.[2]
The family lived at Bowerswell, a house near the Scottish city of Perth that was re-built in 1842. As a child Sophy frequently visited Effie, who lived in London after her marriage in 1848 to the critic and artist John Ruskin. To an extent Effie, who was fifteen years older, acted as Sophy’s "second mother", while Sophy, at a very young age, was exposed to the increasingly strained circumstances of the Ruskins’ unconsummated marriage.[3]
On 25 April 1854 Effie left her husband on the pretence of visiting her parents in Scotland. Sophy was staying with the Ruskins at the time, at their home in Herne Hill, and appears to have been complicit in her sister’s flight. She and Effie boarded a train for Edinburgh at the new King’s Cross station, but Sophy alighted at Hitchin, Hertfordshire where her parents were waiting. Mrs Gray took her place on the train, while Sophy and her father returned to London to deliver a package from Effie to her solicitors. That evening a citation of nullity was delivered to Ruskin, together with certain effects such as Effie’s wedding ring and her keys.[4]
Effie was granted a decree of nullity on 20 July 1854.[5] The previous summer, she, Ruskin and his protégé, John Millais, had spent four months together in the Scottish Highlands, during which time she and Millais formed a close and increasingly intimate bond.[6] In early 1854, Millais painted a portrait of Sophy for her parents. Through her regular visits to his studio in Gower Street, London, where she impressed Millais by her patience,[3] Sophy was able to act a go-between with Effie. During this period, Ruskin’s mother (to whom her son was very close) appears to have indulged Sophy, while, at the same time, casting aspersions on Effie, who was under very considerable stress.[3]
After the annulment of her marriage, Effie avoided Millais for some time, but eventually invited him to Bowerswell, where they were married in June 1855.
For the next few years Sophy continued to sit for Millais. After he and Effie moved to Annat Lodge, close to Bowerswell, she was readily available for this purpose, but it seems also that she was beginning to displace Effie herself as a favoured subject.[7] In the words of art historian Suzanne Fagence Cooper, whose biographical chapter about Sophy (2010) provides the fullest account of her life, Sophy "changes before our eyes from a child to a stunning teenager".[3] This change can be traced in three works by Millais: Autumn Leaves (1855-6), Spring (or Apple Blossom) (1856-9) and, most strikingly, in an "unnerving"[3] portrait of her at the age of 13, entitled Portrait of a Girl, or simply Sophy Gray (1857). Charles Edward Perugini also painted a portrait of Sophy as a young woman; the date is not known with certainty[8] and for some years it was attributed mistakenly to Millais.[9]
In Autumn Leaves, Sophy is one of four young girls beside a smoking bonfire of leaves. Her younger sister Alice (1845–1929)[10] was also in this picture, together with two local girls procured by Effie.[3][11] Spring is in some ways a complementary work. Eight girls (whose ages ranged from 12 to 15) recline in an orchard. Sophy is depicted in profile, wearing a colourful, striped robe, with long flowing hair, while Alice lies a little provocatively with a blade of grass in her mouth.
Sophy Gray is a very sensual, "knowing" and direct image, which, almost inevitably, has provoked questions about the nature of Millais’ relationship with his sister-in-law. There was undoubtedly a strong affection between them, which may well have grown into mutual infatuation. According to Mary Lutyens, who researched the lives of Effie, Ruskin and Millais,[12] it was rumoured that Effie had to send Sophy away because of concerns that she and Millais were growing too close, but there is no clear evidence of a more intimate relationship between them. Sophy’s parents were content for Millais to chaperone her – for example, on an overnight train to London – and, whatever the truth of any rumour, Effie remained close to her sister and often invited her to stay after she and Millais moved back to London in 1861.[3]
Unlike Millais’ 1854 portrait of Sophy, his later work was not kept by the family. It was sold to George Price Boyce, a friend of Millais’ pre-Raphaelite "brother", Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who painted a portrait of Fanny Cornforth, both his own and Boyce's lover,[13] to hang alongside that of Sophy.[3] Entitled Bocca Baciata ("the mouth that has been kissed") after a theme in Boccacio’s Decameron, Rossetti’s picture (1859) was described by William Holman Hunt, another member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as "remarkable for gross sensuality of a revolting kind ... I see Rossetti as advocating as a principle the mere gratification of the eye".[14] As Cooper has remarked, this "after-life" of Sophy Gray demonstrated its "erotic potential".[3]
In 1868 Sophy became very unwell. It is clear from letters at the time that she was suffering from anorexia nervosa. She also became extremely restless and obsessed with music, especially piano playing. Her speech was often incoherent. In March 1869 Millais wrote to William Holman Hunt that Sophy had "been ill a whole year, and away from home, with hysteria".
At the request of the Grays, Millais placed Sophy at Manor Farm House, Chiswick under the care of Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke (1826-88), a leading practitioner in lunacy.[15] Tuke had treated Millais' friend, the painter Edwin Landseer,[3] and, a year or so after Sophy came to him, was involved in the case of Harriet Mordaunt, respondent in a scandalous divorce action.[16] Sophy lived with the family of one of Tuke’s colleagues until she was well enough to move to lodgings in Hammersmith in 1869 and then back to Bowerswell.[3] Although the state of her health fluctuated, it was to remain a problem for her and a concern to others for the rest of her life.
On 16 July 1873 Sophy married James Key Caird (1837-1916), a Dundee jute manufacturer[17] who had courted her for several years. Caird was disliked by her family, who thought him two-faced and were still mindful of Effie's disastrous marriage to Ruskin. However, attempts to dissuade Sophy from going ahead with the wedding were muted by fears of triggering a further collapse of her health.[3]
The Cairds' only child, Beatrix Ada, was born in 1874.[18] The father was notably absent during Sophy’s confinement, thereby intensifying bad feeling with her family. In 1875 he forbade Sophy from staying with Effie on her way to France[3] and, generally, at a time when his business was expanding, he seems to have been both inconsiderate and uncaring towards her.
During her final years, Sophy spent much of her time alone with Beatrix, mostly living between Dundee and Paris. In 1880 Millais painted a final portrait of her, which was exhibited at the new Grosvenor Gallery. Mary Lutyens wrote of it that Millais "perhaps more than anyone, knew the secrets of Sophie's [sic] short life, and in her hauntingly sad expression portrayed an old sadness of his own."[8]
By then Sophy had become increasingly emaciated (the effects largely hidden from others by the weight of late Victorian clothing) and in 1882 returned to the care of Tuke.[3] She died on 15 March 1882, aged 38. Tuke gave the cause of death as exhaustion and "atrophy of nervous system, 17 years".
Sophy's daughter, Beatrix Caird, who Millais painted in 1879,[19] died in 1888. James Caird subsequently used his wealth to support Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-17 and was a significant benefactor to the city of Dundee.[20] He became a baronet in 1913.[21]