AN OIL painting by Southampton’s greatest artist is set to fetch at least £125,000 at an auction in America today.

The picture painted in 1864 by Southampton-born Sir John Everett Millais is of five-year-old British boy John Wycliffe Taylor, and was gifted by the painter to the boy’s father, Tom Taylor.

He wrote the play Our American Cousin which US President Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated the following year in April 1865.

Now, 150 years later, the Millais painting is expected to sell for between $150,000 dollars and $200,000 dollars (£125,000-£165,000) when it is auctioned at Christie’s in New York on Wednesday, October 26.

Sir John Everett Millais was born in Portland Street, Southampton, on June 8, 1829, and was baptised at All Saints’ Church, Southampton, on December 27, 1829.

Southampton City Council owns Millais’s 1871 oil painting Flowing To The Sea.

From Southampton, Millais went on to become one of Britain’s most outstanding Victorian artists.

Multi millionaire Cats, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera composer Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, 68, owns at least 10 oil paintings by Millais and once described him as “the Mozart of fine art”.

In 1878, Millais painted A Jersey Lily, his portrait of Jersey-born actress and King Edward VII’s mistress Lillie Langtry, which is now owned by Jersey Heritage.

In 1886, Millais painted his most famous picture, Bubbles, which was bought by A and F Pears and was featured in advertisements for their soap.

Tom Taylor, to whom Millais gave the painting, was a barrister, journalist, author, playwright and editor of PunchPunch magazine between 1874 and 1880.

According to auctioneers Christie’s he was “an early champion of Millais’s work”.

Christie’s says: “The boy’s portrait was painted in fulfilment of a promise that Millais made to Taylor before John (Taylor’s son) was born – that if he ever had a son, Millais would paint the child in return for Taylor’s ‘many an act of friendly kindness’.

"The portrait was begun not long before the boy’s fifth birthday in 1864, though was not delivered until much later that year owing to a delay caused by the death of the artist’s mother in April.”

Tom Taylor’s son, John Wycliffe Taylor, was one of the few people whose portrait was painted by Sir John Everett Millais and who was photographed by Alice In Wonderland author Lewis Carroll.

John Wycliffe Taylor later came to live in Hampshire. In 1901 he was living at Newtown with his wife Hermanna, their three children and three live-in servants.

Mr Taylor was 66 when he died on October 19, 1925. He left £17,160 three shillings and ninepence in his will – £17,160.19p in modern money.