'Bubbles'

A cabinet card photograph which recreates one of the most famous images of the late-nineteenth century, Millais’s painting A Child’s World, now popularly known as Bubbles following its innovative use by Pears as an advertisement for their soap.

Originally conceived by Sir John Everett Millais as a portrait of his grandson in the style of Dutch vanitas paintings, which commented on the transience of life, it was first exhibited at London’s Grosvenor Gallery in 1886 under the title A Child’s World. It was purchased by Sir William Ingram of the Illustrated London News, who reproduced it in his newspaper as a colour plate. This was how it came to be seen by Thomas J. Barrett, the managing director of Pears who is sometimes known as ‘the father of modern advertising’. Barrett purchased the painting from Ingram for £2,200 and sought Millais’s permission to alter the image slightly by adding a bar of soap in the foreground. Although he was at first reluctant, Millais grew to appreciate the idea when he saw the proofs of the proposed advertisement and he finally acquiesced. The advertisement proved phenomenally successfully, earning the image an enormous and enduring popularity.

When the Lever Brothers acquired Pears, they also acquired the painting. It now hangs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, the model village built to accommodate workers in the Lever Brothers soap factory.

Photographed by G.T. Jones of Surbiton, Kingston-on-Thames, SW London.