From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ophelia

John Everett Millais, 1851–1852

Oil on canvas

168 × 112 cm

Tate Britain, London

Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, and was completed in 1852. Currently held in the Tate Britain in London, it depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing while drowning in a river in Denmark. Although not universally acclaimed when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852, the painting has come to be admired for its beauty and the highly-accurate depiction of a natural landscape. It has been valued by experts at at least £30 million.

Contents 1 Theme and elements 2 Painting process 3 Reception 4 Provenance and value 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

The painting depicts Ophelia, the character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing while floating in a river just before her death by drowning. The scene is described in the play in a famous speech by Hamlet's mother 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.

Ophelia's pose, opening her arms and gazing upwards, resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, but has also been interpreted as erotic.^{[citation needed]}

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 natural ecosystems. Despite its nominal Danish setting, the landscape came to be seen as essentially English. It 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, it is Six Acre Meadow, alongside Church Road, Old Malden.^[1] Millais' close colleague William Holman Hunt was working on The Hireling Shepherd (1851) nearby at the same time.^[2]

The flowers seen floating along the river were chosen to correspond to Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's garland, but also reflect Victorian interest in the "language of flowers", according to which each flower carries a symbolic meaning. The prominent red poppy, not mentioned by Shakespeare, stands for sleep and death.^{[citation needed]}

At an early stage, Millais had 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.^[2]

Millais produced Ophelia in two separate stages: first he painted the landscape, and then the figure of Ophelia. Having found a suitable setting for the picture, he remained on the banks of the Hogsmill River for up to 11 hours a day, six days a week for a five-month period in 1851 in order 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,^[3] 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.^[2]

Ophelia was modelled by artist and muse Elizabeth Siddal, then 19 years old, who would later marry fellow Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Millais had Siddal lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street in London.^[4] 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.^[2]

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". 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?"^[2]

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 will travel there again in 2008. However, an image of the painting will not be used on posters for fear that its romantic power will inspire young women to take their own lives.^[2]

Ophelia is currently being featured in an exhibition, Millais, being held from 26 September 2007 to 13 January 2008 at the Tate Britain. The exhibition is then scheduled to travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from 15 February to 18 May 2008, and to two locations in Japan: the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art in Tobata-ku, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, from 7 June to 17 August 2008, and the Bunkamura Museum of Art from 30 August to 26 October 2008.^[5]

Ophelia was purchased from Millais on 10 December 1851 by art dealer Henry Farrer^[6] 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 at least £30 million.^[2]

• Ophelia (character)
• Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

• Secher, Benjamin. "Ten things you never knew about Ophelia : Benjamin Secher reveals the roles of a tin bath, a straw hut and a deformed vole in the birth of Britain's favourite painting", The Daily Telegraph (Review), 2007-09-22. 
• Millais Ophelia : Behind the painting. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.

• Painters took to local colour. This is Local London (2004-05-06).

• 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