Bubbles

Why it works

A Royal Academician's painting of his grandson, repurposed to sell soap. John Everett Millais called his picture of a small boy gazing up at a bubble "A Child's World"; Thomas J. Barratt, managing director of A. & F. Pears, bought the canvas together with its copyright, added a bar of Pears' soap in the corner and reissued it as "Bubbles." It became perhaps the most famous example of the "artistic" advertising of the 1880s, reproduced for decades on postcards, showcards, presentation prints and billboard posters, and National Museums Liverpool calls it probably the first work of art ever used in advertising. It is studied for the line it crossed between art and commerce. Millais was reportedly furious at first, critics accused him of degrading his art, and the novelist Marie Corelli mocked him in print before withdrawing the jibe; Barratt, meanwhile, used Academy prestige to win middle-class customers. The V&A holds proofs of the lithograph, and the painting hangs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery.