Ophelia (painting)

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Ophelia

John Everett Millais, 1851–1852

Oil on canvas

76.2 × 111.8 cm

Tate Britain, London

Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed in 1852. Currently held in the Tate Britain in London, it depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark.

The work was not widely regarded when first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but has since come to be admired for its beauty and its accurate depiction of a natural landscape. Ophelia has been estimated to have a market value of around £30 million.

Contents 1 Theme and elements 2 Painting process 3 Reception 4 Influence 5 Provenance and valuation 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Theme and elements

The painting depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing while floating in a river just before she drowns. The scene is described in Act IV, Scene VII of the play in a speech by Queen Gertrude:

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come,

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element; but long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.^[1]

Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, but has also been interpreted as erotic.

The painting is known for its depiction of the detailed flora of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem. Despite its nominal Danish setting, the landscape has come to be seen as quintessentially English. "Ophelia" was painted along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey, near Tolworth, Greater London. Barbara Webb, a resident of nearby Old Malden, devoted much time to finding the exact placement of the picture, and according to her research, the scene is located at Six Acre Meadow, alongside Church Road, Old Malden.^[2] Millais' close colleague William Holman Hunt was at the time working on his The Hireling Shepherd.^[3]

The flowers shown floating on the river were chosen to correspond with Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's garland, however they also reflect the Victorian interest in the "language of flowers", according to which each flower carries a symbolic meaning. The prominent red poppy—not mentioned by Shakespeare's description of the scene—represents sleep and death.^[4]

It has often been claimed that a human skull is depicted in the foliage in the riverbank at the right, but there is no extant evidence that this was intended by Millais.^[5] However a naturally formed skull shape is indisputably used by Hunt in his companion piece The Hireling Shepherd, which depicts a death's head moth.

At an early stage in the paintings creation, Millais painted a water vole—which an assistant had fished out of the Hogsmill—paddling next to Ophelia. In December 1851, he showed the unfinished painting to Holman Hunt's relatives. He recorded in his diary, "Hunt's uncle and aunt came, both of whom understood most gratifyingly every object except my water rat. The male relation, when invited to guess at it, eagerly pronounced it to be a hare. Perceiving by our smiles that he had made a mistake, a rabbit was then hazarded. After which I have a faint recollection of a dog or a cat being mentioned." Millais painted the water vole out of the final picture, although a rough sketch of it still exists in an upper corner of the canvas hidden by its frame.^[3]

[edit] Painting process

Millais produced Ophelia in two separate stages: he first painted the landscape, and secondly the figure of Ophelia. Having found a suitable setting for the picture, Millais remained on the banks of the Hogsmill River in Ewell—within a literal stone's throw of where fellow Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt painted The Light of the World—for up to 11 hours a day, six days a week, over a five-month period in 1851.

This allowed him to accurately depict the natural scene before him. Millais encountered various difficulties during the painting process. He wrote in a letter to a friend, "The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh. I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay... and am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water. Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be greater punishment to a murderer than hanging." By November 1851, the weather had turned windy and snowy. Millais oversaw the building of a hut "made of four hurdles,^[7] like a sentry-box, covered outside with straw". According to Millais, sitting inside the hut made him feel like Robinson Crusoe. William Holman Hunt was so impressed by the hut that he had an identical one built for himself.^[3]

Ophelia was modelled by artist and muse Elizabeth Siddal, then 19 years old. Millais had Siddal lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street in London.^[8] As it was now winter, he placed oil lamps under the tub to warm the water, but was so intent on his work that he allowed them to go out. As a result, Siddal caught a severe cold, and later sent Millais a £50 doctor's bill.^[3]

[edit] Reception

When Ophelia was first publicly exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1852, it was not universally acclaimed. A critic in The Times wrote that "there must be something strangely perverse in the imagination which sources Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty", while another newspaper said that "Mr. Millais's Ophelia in her pool ... makes us think of a dairymaid in a frolic".^[3] Even the great art critic John Ruskin, an avid supporter of Millais, while finding the technique of the painting "exquisite", expressed doubts about the decision to set it in a Surrey landscape and asked, "Why the mischief should you not paint pure nature, and not that rascally wirefenced garden-rolled-nursery-maid's paradise?"^[9]

In the 20th century, the painting was championed by surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. In an article published in a 1936 journal, he wrote, "How could Salvador Dalí fail to be dazzled by the flagrant surrealism of English Pre-Raphaelitism. The Pre-Raphaelite painters bring us radiant women who are, at the same time, the most desirable and most frightening that exist." In 1906, Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki called the painting "a thing of considerable beauty" in one of his novels; since then, the painting has been highly popular in Japan. It was exhibited in Tokyo in 1998 and travelled there again in 2008.

[edit] Influence

The painting has been widely referenced and pastiched in art, film and photography. Laurence Olivier's film Hamlet (1948) based its portrayal of Ophelia's death on the painting. The video of Nick Cave's song "Where the Wild Roses Grow" depicted Kylie Minogue mimicking the pose of the image. The latter was included in the Van Gogh Museum's 2008 exhibition of Millais's work. The museum also created the exhibition Ik, Ophelia (Me, Ophelia) which explored re-creations and explorations of the composition by photographers. It included work by Sam Taylor-Wood, Rineke Dijkstra and Hellen van Meene.^[10] Recently the painting was directly referenced in episode 14 of the anime Ergo Proxy. The episode is titled "Someone Like You/ophelia," and has many similarities to the poem Ophelia sings. The main character even assumes the pose in the painting.

[edit] Provenance and valuation

Ophelia was purchased from Millais on 10 December 1851 by the art dealer Henry Farrer for 300 guineas. Farrer sold the painting to B. G. Windus, an avid collector of Pre-Raphaelite art, who sold it on in 1862 for 748 guineas. The painting is presently held at Tate Britain, London, and is valued by experts at least £30 million.^[3]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Secher, Benjamin. "Ten things you never knew about Ophelia". The Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2007. Retrieved on 16 January 2008.

[edit] External links

• Painters took to local colour, This is Local London, 6 May 2004, http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/archive/display.var.486584.0.painters_took_to_local_colour.php 
• Millais Ophelia – a website about the painting
• LizzieSiddal.com – a weblog researching and discussing the life of Elizabeth Siddal
• smARThistory: Ophelia – a short video podcast about the painting
• Amanda Whewell: Ophelia – a short essay discussing the popularity of Ophelia in paintings