Tate revives interest in Ophelia artist

John Everett Millais, best known for his extraordinary portrait of Shakespeare's Ophelia, was the most successful painter in Britain in the second half of the 19th century, with a reputation stretching across the Atlantic.

He was a founder of the radical Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. According to the traditional view he then sold out for commercial gain, swapping artistic innovation for wealth and popularity.

It was a view perpetuated by the critic John Ruskin, who had been a fervent supporter of the brotherhood but condemned Millais's later work as "a catastrophe". However, Ruskin may not have been impartial, as his wife Effie left him for Millais after the artist painted her.

The Tate show will argue that Millais was much more complex and innovative than he has been given credit.

His late works, in particular, "are as dramatic in their freshness of vision as those of his Pre-Raphaelite period," say the curators. The exhibition will include about 140 paintings and works on paper, among them loans from galleries in New Zealand and America and several from private collections that have not been seen in public for many years, such as Christmas Eve 1887 and Portrait Of A Girl (Sophie Gray) 1857.

Millais was born in Southampton in 1829 and showed prodigious talent from a young age. He won a place at the Royal Academy schools, where he met Rossetti and Holman-Hunt, at the age of 11. Later in life he was granted a baronetcy and was elected president of the Royal Academy. He died of cancer in 1896.

His works have proved perennially popular with the public who have made postcards of Ophelia a Tate bestseller.

Millais will open at Tate Britain on 26 September and run until 13 January next year. Information at www.tate.org.uk/tickets