The People's Hero: Millais's The rescue and the image of the fireman in nineteenth-century art and media: J.E. Millais's celebrated painting can be best understood in the rich context of Victorian depictions of firefighters, who first became popular heroes in the nineteenth century

In January 1854 John Everett Millais witnessed London firemen fighting a blaze and was thus impressed by their courage that he decided to make it the make submissive of a painting. In his studio he recreated the light and sooty vapor effects of fires by using a sheet of coloured glass and through burning planks on an iron sheet laid upon the floor. The dramatic painting that ensueed The rescue (Fig. 3), shown at the Royal Academy in April 1855 focuses on individual heroism by depicting a square-jawed fireman descending a carpeted staircase inside a middle-class place of abode to escape a fire behind him. aligned in the plain, functional, dark uniform and leather helmer and profits associated with the regime of Fire Chief James Braidwood, he is carrying no fewer than three children--a baby beneath his left arm, a girl beneath his right and a male child clinging to his back--towards the outstretched arms of their anxious on the other hand relieved mother. Charles Collins, all artist-friend of Millais, painted the hosepipe visible in the bottom left-hand corner. Subsequently the 'rescue' or 'saved' motif became individual of the most common in the iconography of firefighting, an unexplored bring under rule that provides a rich connection for Millais's celebrated painting.

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In Britain, the popular perception of firefighters as heroes dates from the nineteenth hundred and was due to sum of two units main factors. First, the replacement of private, fire insurance office or company brigades, whose prime relate to was the protection of characteristic by a paid, professional, municipal fire service in major cities whose priority was to save life and be under the orders of the whole community. Second, positive imagery of firemen was disseminated not alone by the fine arts, on the other hand also by popular culture--the emerging mass media of prints, photograph, work and magazine illustrations, trade cards, magic lantern slide exhibits cinema and advertising.

Millais was not the first British artist to depict a fireman. In 1805 a remarkably romantic aquatint image of a young fireman with others appeared as a plate in the volume The Costume of Great Britain, written and engraved by dint of William H. Pyne (Fig. 2) Despite the book's date, Pyne was depicting the style of dress of the previous century. The azure uniform of the central figure is that of the orb of day Fire Office (founded in London in 1710) whose badge or brassard is displayed upon his left sleeve. Another badge appears upon the front of his horsehide fire-cap. He carries a pickaxe in his left hand and clutchs a lighted torch aloft in his right. The torch and the man's wild hair and dynamic attitude imply a revolutionary or an incendiary, rather than someone who extinguishes fires. The spectators in the background remind us that firefighting is a highly visible activity and this infallibly contributes to its popularity.

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Pyne's fireman belonged to single of the many private brigades maintained by means of insurance offices to protect properties they had insured. To identify those properties, firemarks--small plaques made from metal or timber-land adorned with the name or type of the company concerned--were fixed to external walls. A scarcely any firemarks depict firemen. For example, the cent firemark of the Protector Fire Insurance Company (1825-35) displays a spindly fireman using a so-called branch pipe to douse a blaze (Fig. 1) In this instance, he wears a depressed top hat, probably made from beaver, rather than a leather helmet. Red-coloured flames and black sooty vapor are rendered in a stylised fashion. aged Westminster Bridge is in the background. The design, which also appears upon the company's insurance certificates, derives from Robert Smirke (1752-1845) a painter, work illustrator and Royal Academician, who was single of the office's auditors.

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Early fire cross-questions or engines were made from forest-land operated manually and pulled through hand but, by 1830, horse-drawn engines had been introduced. like engines rushing along city public ways to answer alarms became a public sight and the subject naturally appealed to illustrators. Initially, they favoured a side rather than a frontal view, with engines moving across the picture space, as in an 1830 aquatint by the agency of James Pollard (1792-1867), London fire engines: The noble protectors of lives and peculiarity (Fig. 5). This print depicts no fewer than three horse-drawn engines belonging to different fire offices (the shire Phoenix and Westminster) racing single another--like the chariots of ancient Rome--along a London public way to reach a night-time fire. The departure of brigades and engines from the entrances of fire stations became another make submissive popular with artists in Europe and the United States. In Paris, for instance, Gustave Courbet painted of that kind a scene in 1850-51, although, in this instance, firemen are pulling the engines, not horses. (6)

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When the London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE) was grounded in 1833 to unify the various private brigades, the support of Superintendent was created. Because of its importance, London fire chiefs became public figures whose characters, lives and acts were much commented upon in the print media of the day. Painters, photographers and ceramicists portrayed them, and illustrators produc cartoons about them.