A MAGNIFICENT painting by Sir John Everett Millais has gone back on the art market - four years after setting a world auction record price for a work by the Southampton-born artist.

Sleeping, depicting Millais' youngest daughter Alice Sophia Caroline always known as Carrie, fast asleep while the family maid, Berthe, sews beside the bed, fetched £2,091,500 at Christie's in London in June 1999.

Now the unnamed private buyer has put the intensely personal portrait back on the market, again at Christie's.

But experts do not anticipate that the owner will make a profit: the gentle scene has been given a pre-sale estimate of £1.2m to £1.8m.

Millais, who in 1840, aged 11, became the youngest-ever student at the Royal Academy, painted the exquisitely detailed Sleeping in 1865-66 when Carrie was aged about four.

A second portrait of the artist's youngest daughter is on offer at the same sale.

Early Days was painted in 1873, when Carrie would have been about 11, and shows her sitting outside on the ground holding a black cat and staring directly at the viewer. It is estimated to realise £200,000 to £300,000. The picture has been in a private family collection since being given to the present owner more than 60 years ago.

Millais was born in Southampton in 1819, the son of John William and Emily Mary Millais. His father came from a well-known Jersey family and his mother (nee Evanny) came from a prosperous family of Southampton saddlers.

Millais was the most naturally gifted member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was also at the centre of the greatest sex scandal of the day. Millais seduced author and art critic John Ruskin's wife Euphemia (Effie) while the three were on holiday.

It transpired that the marriage had not been consummated. But following an acrimonious and notorious divorce case Effie and Millais were married and she rapidly produced eight children. Millais died in 1896 and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, London.