The Red Room

On the way in to the Red Room some of Milles' early small sculp­tures are presented. As their names imply - The Beggar women (1901), Girl with a cat (1901) and Women in the Wind (1903) - deal mostly with realistic subjects. 

The walls are Pompeian red and look like marble, but they are painted in a technique called polished stucco (stucco lus­tra), executed by an Italian artisan, Augusto Conte, in 1929. Milles designed the decorative mosaic floor the same year. 

A wide selection of Milles' works can be seen in this room. One of Milles' best-loved creations Sunglitter (1918), depicts a naiad riding on a dolphin. Milles preferred a dark green patina for his bronze sculptures. Sometimes the patina is almost black, as in the sculp­ture of the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1912). 

The same colour appears on Swedenborg (1928) who is seen kneeling on the Zodiac (a refused study for a projected Swedenborg monument in London) and God of all Religions from 1949. 

In the passage between the Red Room and the Monk Cell we find a limestone relief of a Dancing Ma­enad from 1912. At that time Milles was stylistically influenced by the ancient masters, especially those of the Greek archaic period. 

The marble portal is from northern Italy and was purchased by Milles in Munich in 1906.