[1] Effie Gray (1828–1897), known initially to the family as "Phemy," was the first of fifteen children, and Sophie was the tenth—three sisters, one also named Sophia Margaret, predeceased her.

[1] As a child, Gray frequently visited and stayed with her sister Effie in London with her husband, the critic and artist John Ruskin.

[3] In fact, through her increasing presence in the Ruskin household, Gray may, in some respects, have been a convenient chaperone for her elder sister, whose largely independent social life tended to attract comment.

[1][4][a] According to Effie, Ruskin's manservant, Frederick Crawley, expressed to Gray his concern that other servants might spread gossip "all over Camberwell."

She and Effie were seen off in silence by Ruskin[1][4] at the recently opened King's Cross station, where, accompanied by Crawley,[5] they boarded a train for Edinburgh.

Through her regular visits to his studio in Gower Street, London, where she impressed Millais with her patience,[3] Gray was able to act a go-between with Effie.

During this period, Ruskin's mother (to whom her son was close) appears to have indulged Gray, while, at the same time, casting aspersions on Effie, who was under considerable stress.

[9][f] Charles Edward Perugini also painted a portrait of Gray as a young woman; the date is not known with certainty[10] and for some years it was attributed mistakenly to Millais.

Gray is depicted in profile, wearing a colourful, striped robe, with long flowing hair, while Alice lies somewhat provocatively with a blade of grass in her mouth.

Sophie Gray is a sensual, knowing, and direct image, which, almost inevitably, has provoked questions about the nature of Millais's relationship with his sister-in-law.

[3] Entitled Bocca Baciata ("the mouth that has been kissed") after a theme in Boccacio's Decameron, Rossetti's picture (1859) was described by William Holman Hunt, another member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as "remarkable for gross sensuality of a revolting kind ...

In 2012 Autumn Leaves and Sophie Gray, the latter from a private collection, were displayed alongside each other in Tate Britain's major exhibition of Pre-Raphaelites, Victorian Avant-Garde.

In March 1869 Millais wrote to William Holman Hunt that Gray had "been ill a whole year, and away from home, with hysteria.

[15] Tuke had treated Millais's friend, the painter Edwin Landseer,[3] and, a year or so after Gray came to him, was involved in the case of Harriet Mordaunt, respondent in a scandalous divorce action.

"[10] The portrait hung in Effie and John Everett Millais's house at Palace Gate, London, and remains in the family.

By the 1880s Gray had become increasingly emaciated (the effects largely hidden from others by the weight of late Victorian clothing), and in 1882 returned to the care of Tuke.

James Caird subsequently used his wealth to support Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914–1917, and was a significant benefactor to the city of Dundee.