The Vale of Rest

Millais - The Vale of Rest (1858-59) Tate Britain - "Everything looks obscurely but menacingly significant"

The Vale of Rest (1858-9) is a painting by John Everett Millais.

The painting is of a graveyard as night is coming on. Beyond the graveyard wall there's a low chapel with a bell. In the foreground of the secene, there are two nuns - the heads of the two nuns are level and symmetrical. They're Roman Catholic nuns, one of the nuns holds a rosary, and one of the nuns is digging a grave. Her forearm and body strain under the weight of a shovelful. The other, overseeing the work, turns with a look of apprehension, anguish.

Art critic, Tom Lubbock : " Graves. Dusk. A walled enclosure. The spooky, looming trees. Nuns. Catholics (in England then, still an object of suspicion). Sexual segregation. Religiosity. Mistress and servant, a power relationship, maybe some deeper emotional bondage. Female labour. Something being buried or exhumed. Twin wreaths. The deep dark earth. Corpses, secrets, conspiracy, fear. It's a picture that pulls out all the stops."