Stella
Not on view
Atkinson's print is based on a painting by Millais, the subject taken from Jonathan Swift's "A Journal to Stella" (1766). Shown three-quarter length, the young woman holds an open letter from a male correspondent with additional love tokens displayed on an adjacent bureau. First shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1868, Millais's eighteenth-century themed work is now in the Manchester Art Gallery. This print was published as a pendant with "Vanessa," the latter showing another Swift heroine painted by Millais. A critic in "The Art Journal" thought that the subjects had been "very skilfully multiplied" by the printmaker, and commented that such "agreeable adornments for a drawing room have seldom been brought within our reach."
