The lady was trying to be a realist:
"Out flew the web, and floated wide.
The mirror cracked from side to side."
"A man's work must be the reflex of a living image in his own mind, and
not the icy double of the facts themselves. It will be seen that we were
never realists. I think art would have ceased to have the slightest
interest for any of us had the object been only to make a representation,
elaborate or unelaborate, of a fact in nature. Independently of the
conviction that such a system would put out of operation the faculty
making man "like a God," it was apparent that a mere imitator gradually
comes to see nature claylike and finite, as it seems when illness
brings a cloud before the eyes."
The practice of making independent studies for pictures which was dear
to the heart of Rossetti, was discouraged by Hunt and Millais because
they feared to lose unity of effect if they dwelt upon details except in
their relation to the whole. They painted, first the background, after
the manner described, straight from Nature; if possible, they placed the
figures in the open air and studied them outside the studio walls.
There are curious differences to be noted whenever the picture is
repeated, and they seem to be always in the direction of something
more complex than the original. In the larger version of "The Hireling
Shepherd," he is far more subtle and sophisticated, while the
shepherdess looks older and more scornful. In the smaller version of
"The Triumph of the Innocents," the hues of a soft, moonlit night
prevail, the Virgin is just a sweet mother, the Child is blessing the
children. In the larger version moonlight intensified, which was found
by means of a lens to be that of the sun, bathes the children; the
Virgin, who is much older, gazes upon them with eyes in which a joyful
wonder seems to be fighting still with almost unconquerable sorrow; the
Child, a wheat-ear in his hand, has thrown himself back in an ecstasy of
divine laughter. The large water-colour of "Christ among the Rabbis,"
the rainbow halo encircling the head of the Child as he meditates, while
the dark-eyed boys, Nicodemus and Stephen, look on, is different in
every respect from "The Finding in the Temple."