.gif)
Ophelia (painting)
Encyclopedia
Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais
, completed between 1851-52. 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.
'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.
The episode depicted is not seen onstage, but exists only in Gertrude's description. Ophelia has fallen into the river from a tree overhanging it, while gathering flowers. She lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her danger ("incapable of her own distress"). Her clothes, trapping air, have allowed her to temporarily stay afloat ("Her clothes spread wide, / And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up."). But eventually, "her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay" down "to muddy death."
Ophelia's death has been praised as one of the most poetically written death scenes in literature.
Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—also 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. Millais Road is now nearby. Millais' close colleague William Holman Hunt
was at the time working on his The Hireling Shepherd
nearby.
The flowers shown floating on the river were chosen to correspond with Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's garland. 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.
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. 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 painting's 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.
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, 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.
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. 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 her father later sent Millais a letter demanding £50 for medical expenses. According to Millais' son, he eventually accepted a lower sum.
in London in 1852, it was not universally acclaimed. A critic in The Times
wrote that "there must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty", while a further review in the same 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?"
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.
's film Hamlet
(1948) based its portrayal of Ophelia's death on the painting. In Ken Russell's biopic of Rossetti, Dante's Inferno
, the composition is used to symbolise Elizabeth Siddal's own death. The video of Nick Cave
's song "Where the Wild Roses Grow
" depicted Kylie Minogue
mimicking the pose of the image. The video was included in the Van Gogh Museum
's 2008 exhibition of Millais's work. The museum also created the exhibition and book Ik, Ophelia (I, Ophelia) which included re-creations and explorations of the composition by photographers. It included work by Sam Taylor-Wood
, Rineke Dijkstra
and Hellen van Meene. The still of Kirsten Dunst
floating down a stream in her wedding dress with her bouquet in Lars von Trier
's Melancholia is also inspired by Ophelia.
. 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.
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
, completed between 1851-52. Currently held in the Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
in London, it depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's play Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
.
The work was not widely regarded when first exhibited at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, 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.
Theme and elements
The painting depicts Ophelia, a character from ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's play Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, 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.
The episode depicted is not seen onstage, but exists only in Gertrude's description. Ophelia has fallen into the river from a tree overhanging it, while gathering flowers. She lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her danger ("incapable of her own distress"). Her clothes, trapping air, have allowed her to temporarily stay afloat ("Her clothes spread wide, / And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up."). But eventually, "her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay" down "to muddy death."
Ophelia's death has been praised as one of the most poetically written death scenes in literature.
Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—also 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
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...
of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
. Despite its nominal Danish setting, the landscape has come to be seen as quintessentially English. "Ophelia" was painted along the banks of the Hogsmill
Hogsmill
The Hogsmill River in Surrey is one of the tributaries of the River Thames; it rises in Ewell and flows into the Thames at Kingston upon Thames on the reach above Teddington Lock.-Course:...
River in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, near Tolworth
Tolworth
Tolworth is a mostly residential area of outer South London in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, located south west of Charing Cross. Neighbouring places include: New Malden, Kingston, Surbiton, Berrylands, Chessington, Ewell and Worcester Park....
, Greater London. Barbara Webb, a resident of nearby Old Malden
Old Malden
Old Malden is a ward of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames south west of Charing Cross.It is one of the more affluent areas in the borough, with Coombe , and Kingston Vale...
, 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. Millais Road is now nearby. Millais' close colleague William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...
was at the time working on his The Hireling Shepherd
The Hireling Shepherd
The Hireling Shepherd is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. It represents a shepherd neglecting his flock in favour of an attractive country girl to whom he shows a death's-head hawkmoth...
nearby.
The flowers shown floating on the river were chosen to correspond with Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's garland. They also reflect the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
interest in the "language of flowers
Language of flowers
The language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, was a Victorian-era means of communication in which various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken...
", according to which each flower carries a symbolic meaning. The prominent red poppy
Poppy
A poppy is one of a group of a flowering plants in the poppy family, many of which are grown in gardens for their colorful flowers. Poppies are sometimes used for symbolic reasons, such as in remembrance of soldiers who have died during wartime....
—not mentioned by Shakespeare's description of the scene—represents sleep and death.
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. 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 painting's 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
Hare
Hares and jackrabbits are leporids belonging to the genus Lepus. Hares less than one year old are called leverets. Four species commonly known as types of hare are classified outside of Lepus: the hispid hare , and three species known as red rock hares .Hares are very fast-moving...
. 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.
Painting process
Ewell
Ewell is a village in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, close to the southern boundary of Greater London. It is located 14 miles south-south-west of Charing Cross and forms part of the suburbia that surrounds Greater London. Despite its growing population it is still referred to as a...
—within a literal stone's throw of where fellow Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...
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, like a sentry-box, covered outside with straw". According to Millais, sitting inside the hut made him feel like Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
. William Holman Hunt was so impressed by the hut that he had an identical one built for himself.
Ophelia was modelled by artist and muse Elizabeth Siddal
Elizabeth Siddal
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal was an English artists' model, poet and artist who was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and most of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's early paintings of women.-Early...
, then 19 years old. Millais had Siddal lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street
Gower Street (London)
Gower Street is a street in Bloomsbury, Central London, England, running between Euston Road to the north and Montague Place to the south.North Gower Street is a separate street running north of the Euston Road...
in London. 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 her father later sent Millais a letter demanding £50 for medical expenses. According to Millais' son, he eventually accepted a lower sum.
Reception
When Ophelia was first publicly exhibited at the Royal AcademyRoyal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in London in 1852, it was not universally acclaimed. A critic in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote that "there must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty", while a further review in the same 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
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, 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?"
In the 20th century, the painting was championed by surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
painter Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
. 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
Natsume Soseki
, born ', is widely considered to be the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji period . He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, Chinese-style poetry, and fairy tales...
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.
Influence
The painting has been widely referenced and pastiched in art, film and photography. In The Ring 2, while Rachel Keller browses the pages of the book found in the cellar of Samara Morgan's house, this painting can be seen on the book. Laurence OlivierLaurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
's film Hamlet
Hamlet (1948 film)
Hamlet is a 1948 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, adapted and directed by and starring Sir Laurence Olivier. Hamlet was Olivier's second film as director, and also the second of the three Shakespeare films that he directed...
(1948) based its portrayal of Ophelia's death on the painting. In Ken Russell's biopic of Rossetti, Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno (1967 film)
Dante's Inferno: The Private Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poet and Painter is a feature-length 35mm film directed by Ken Russell and first screened on the BBC on 22 December 1967. It quickly became a staple in cinemas in retrospectives of Russell's work...
, the composition is used to symbolise Elizabeth Siddal's own death. The video of Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
's song "Where the Wild Roses Grow
Where the Wild Roses Grow
"Where the Wild Roses Grow" is an alternative-rock song written by Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' ninth album Murder Ballads , with guest vocals by Australian pop-singer Kylie Minogue. The song was produced by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Tony Cohen and...
" depicted Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE - often known simply as Kylie - is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing...
mimicking the pose of the image. The video was included in the Van Gogh Museum
Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, featuring the works of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. It has the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world.-Background:...
's 2008 exhibition of Millais's work. The museum also created the exhibition and book Ik, Ophelia (I, Ophelia) which included re-creations and explorations of the composition by photographers. It included work by Sam Taylor-Wood
Sam Taylor-Wood
Samantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
, Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra is a female Dutch photographer.-Life and work:Dijkstra concentrates on single portraits, and usually works in series, looking at groups such as adolescents, clubbers, and soldiers. Her subjects are often shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background...
and Hellen van Meene. The still of Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...
floating down a stream in her wedding dress with her bouquet in Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
's Melancholia is also inspired by Ophelia.
Provenance and valuation
Ophelia was purchased from Millais on 10 December 1851 by the art dealer Henry Farrer for 300 guineasGuinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
. 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
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
, London, and is valued by experts at least £30 million.
External links
- 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