The paintings on the left and right are titled, respectively, My First Sermon (1863) and My Second Sermon (1864). They were painted by one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Sir John Everett Millais. In both we see a lovely child, who in the first picture, as the title suggests, is all excitement to attend her first sermon. Although the second picture was painted a year later, this is not at all reflected in the painting itself. We see the same lovely little girl and thereby assume that very little time passed between the two pictures. Only this time the child is innocently asleep.
What is interesting about both paintings is that they use a theme and a motif that were of particular popularity in Victorian England. Childhood was so popular a theme that at one point the curator of the exhibition remarked that everywhere in the salon were children’s portraits, and that artists who would come to visit the exhibition would be looking at little else but kids of all shapes and conditions painted by other artists. The motif that was repeatedly evoked was that of sleeping girls and women. And so both found their way into the painting.
But what is also important if that the girl has fallen asleep during the sermon. We have come to hold an image of Victorian England as that of a country very rigorous in its piety. No wonder therefore that children as young as the girl in the painting were encouraged to attend sermons which were expected to instruct them in good faith. However, the message of the second painting was so explicit that the Archbishop of Canterbury concluded thus:
“I have learnt a very wholesome lesson… I see a little lady here… who, by the eloquence of her silent slumber, has given us a warning of the evil of lengthy sermons and drowsy discources“.
