Between Two Fires

Description

Inscribed ‘F.D. Millet’ bottom right

Dr John A.P. Millet wrote that ‘Between Two Fires’ is a very typical example of the style in which his father was trained at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. Like most other paintings of the period, it was executed in the 14th century Abbot’s Grange in Broadway, Worcestershire, which Millet had salvaged from falling into complete disrepair, and had for many years used as a studio (he painted in the old refectory).

The exterior of the Grange today. Now a hotel.

The windows we see in “Between Two Fires” and some of Millet’s other paintings. The Grange was large enough that this is the location in which he painted most of his murals.

A professional model – probably a certain Miss Green – posed for both the girls. Angelo Colarossi, Millet’s regular model for male figures, was doubtless used for some of the routine poses for the Puritan, but the facial expression seems to have been taken from Lindsay Macarthur, a Highland landscape artist ‘with a sardonic, biting humor , a quick temper and fierce loyalties’, who was one of the group of artists living in or near Broadway at the period. Lindsay Macarthur was the model for another of Millet’s pictures, ‘The Black Sheep’, now in the New Bedford Public Library in Massachusetts (letters of 15 December 1954 and 31 January 1955).

Some other photos of the Grange building today, which has been converted to a first class boutique hotel in Broadway: