Tag Archives: John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851)

If you were to choose any British art gallery to walk into today, you would be sure to find one or more paint­ings by one or more artists belong­ing to the Pre-Raphaelite Broth­er­hood. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of Eng­lish painters, poets, and art crit­ics, found­ed in 1848 by William Hol­man Hunt, John Everett Mil­lais, Dante Gabriel Ros­set­ti, and oth­ers, who sought to reform art and return it to the glo­ry days, as they saw it, of Ital­ian fif­teenth cen­tu­ry art. That peri­od of art, so-called Quat­tro­cen­to art, was char­ac­terised by abun­dant detail, colour and com­plex­i­ty; in the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, artists – such as Raphael – were seen by the group as hav­ing a cor­rupt­ing influ­ence on art, ush­er­ing in the unnat­ur­al and stylised art of Man­ner­ism. Parmigianino’s Madon­na With The Long Neck (1540) is often used as an exam­ple of Man­ner­ism play­ing fast and loose with prop­er per­spec­tive, as I’m sure you can see.

Parmi­gian­i­no’s Madon­na With The Long Neck (1540)

Today, we’re look­ing at a clas­sic of the Pre-Raphaelites, name­ly Ophe­lia, the 1852 paint­ing by British artist Sir John Everett Mil­lais (and held in Tate Britain). Ophe­lia is of course a char­ac­ter from Shake­speare’s Ham­let, a Dan­ish noble­woman dri­ven mad by her love for Prince Ham­let and who ulti­mate­ly drowns in despair. Her drown­ing is not usu­al­ly seen onstage in the play, but mere­ly report­ed by Queen Gertrude who tells the audi­ence that Ophe­lia, out of her mind with grief, has fall­en from a wil­low tree over­hang­ing a brook. She lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her dan­ger (“inca­pable of her own dis­tress”), her clothes, trap­ping air and allow­ing her to stay afloat for a while (“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”.

Mil­lais paints Ophe­lia in a pose with open arms and upward gaze in the man­ner of saints or mar­tyrs (they did love a trag­ic woman, the Pre-Raphs). In keep­ing with the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelites, he has used bright colours, with lots of detailed flo­ra and fideli­ty to nature. Despite its nom­i­nal Dan­ish set­ting, the land­scape has actu­al­ly come to be seen as quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Eng­lish (Ophe­lia was paint­ed along the banks of the Hogsmill Riv­er near Tol­worth in Sur­rey). The flow­ers shown float­ing on the riv­er were cho­sen to cor­re­spond with Shake­speare’s descrip­tion of Ophe­li­a’s gar­land.

Fun fact: at one point, Mil­lais had paint­ed a water vole pad­dling away near Ophe­lia, but changed his mind (prob­a­bly cor­rect­ly) after an acquain­tance mis­took it for a hare or rab­bit. Although ful­ly paint­ed over, a rough sketch of it still exists in a cor­ner of the can­vas hid­den by the frame, appar­ent­ly.

Mil­lais’ Ophe­lia (1851)