Pencil, 9 by 10.5 cm

Provenance: Raoul Millais

The present drawing is a study for the Irish wolfhound in Millais’s 1856 painting Peace Concluded, now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The dog sits to the far right of the painting, curled up at the feet of an injured officer who has returned from the Crimean War. In his hand the officer holds a copy of The Times announcing that the war has ended. This seminal Pre Raphaelite work was greatly  admired by John Ruskin who described is “among the world’s great masterpieces”. The sitter for the central female figure in the final painting  was Effie Gray, Millais’s wife, who had previously been married to Ruskin.