According to Malcolm Warner, this beautiful picture is one of a small group of female heads which Millais painted on panel, between 1854 and 1858. He used models from his own artistic or family circle such as Annie Miller or his own wife Effie. These paintings were described later in the nineteenth century as ‘problem pictures’ because they were neither portraits nor genre paintings, instead they have been described as ‘nuanced observations of gesture and expression’ into which we can read our own story. Thus in The Violet’s Message (Private Collection) the red-haired Annie Miller tenderly opens an envelope of violets, a love-token of the time. In Wandering Thoughts (Manchester City Art Gallery) the model in mourning dress has just dropped a black bordered letter on her lap. In Only a Lock of Hair (Manchester City Art Gallery) a young girl holds a pair of scissors to her dark locks to give as a love-token. In all four pictures Millais gives special emphasis to his sitters’ hands. Annie Miller clasps the envelope; the mourning girl grips the arms of her chair; the model tightly holds a lock of her own hair and in our painting the sitter clasps one hand to her heart while holding the wedding card with the other.

The title given by Millais to the present painting, Wedding Cards, refers to the custom whereby a married couple sent notices to their friends to invite them to visit them ‘at home’. Marcia Pointon (op. cit.) discusses the state of matrimony in mid nineteenth century urban England concluding that marriage was not a romantic option for the middle-class woman but a means of a social and economic security. The subject of matrimony is common in Millais’s work of the early 1850’s. In the summer of 1853 he had joined John Ruskin and his wife Effie on a holiday in Scotland and had fallen in love with Effie. After a lengthy and scandalous divorce, the Ruskin’s marriage was annulled and Effie became legally Miss Euphemia Gray once again. Millais and Effie were married in 1855.

The first owner of the picture was John Miller, an early patron and supported of the Pre-Raphaelites. It is likely that he purchased it from the Liverpool Academy in 1854 where it was first exhibited. Millais subsequently exhibited it at the Pre-Raphaelites’ private exhibition held at Russell Place in London in 1857. This exhibition was reviewed by Coventry Patmore in Saturday Review no. 4.88 (4 July 1857). The critic described Millais’s works as follows: ‘Millais exhibited four small portraits – one of Mr Holman Hunt, another of Mr Wilkie Collins, and two female heads. One of these, called Wedding Cards justifies the highest praise the artist has ever reached as a colourist, and yet, strange to say, there was less positive colour in this picture than in any other in the room’.

In May 1858, the picture was included in an auction ‘of the valuable and extensive collection of English Pictures and Drawings, Formed with great Judgement and Taste by that well-known Amateur, John Miller Esq. of Liverpool’ and was catalogued as ‘WEDDING CARDS. Very highly finished’. Bought after the sale by Gambart for 112 guineas, it passed through Agnew’s and in May 1859 was purchased by Thomas E. Plint of Leeds. Plint was a stockbroker and non-conformist leader, as well as a keen collector of contemporary pictures. He died in 1862 and the picture was sold in the sale of his collection at Christie’s on 8 March 1862. By 1871 Wedding Cards was in the hands of William Waring where it remained until the death of his widow in 1902.

It was sold again at Christie’s on 22 February 1902 when it was acquired by Agnew’s who sold it to William Hesketh Lever, later 1st Viscount Leverhulme. Leverhulme presented the picture to the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in 1922, and it was included in their 1948 centenary exhibition, The Pre-Raphaelites – their Friends and Followers. At the Lever Art Gallery sale of 1958 it was again bought by Agnew’s who handled it four times between 1858 and 1958.

In a French, 1st half of the 19th century, gilded frame with engraved stylised ribbon and leaf in a frieze bordered by pearl and pin and ribbon ornament.