The Winnipeg Free Press reports on a local family that donated a valuable Pre-Raphealite painting to the local art museum:

“It’s a really spectacular work,” Borys said of the one-by-1.3-metre image of three young girls communing outdoors. “We do have pieces in our collection that are valued higher, but none at the time of their donation.”

Millais is best known as one of the founders of the London-based Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, along with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

“This is a coup for the WAG,” said commercial art dealer Shaun Mayberry, co-owner of Winnipeg’s Mayberry Fine Art.

“It’s an extremely significant piece within its area. There aren’t a lot like it, and even fewer in private hands.”

Borys says that Afternoon Tea is part of a significant group of works Millais produced in the 1870s and 1880s that celebrate the subject of children.

“She (Patty) loved the painting,” said Everett, 83, who bought it at auction in 1971. “She was very much interested in children and that genre of work.”

City Family Donates $2.75m Painting to WAG (Winnipeg Free Press)