Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia

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0:00:06.5 Dr. Beth Harris: We’re in Tate Britain looking at the beautiful painting of Ophelia by John Everett Millais. Ophelia is a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

0:00:16.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: The scene that we’re looking at takes place after Hamlet murders Ophelia’s father. And she’s driven mad, and in that madness, lets herself drown. It’s that moment where she’s both buoyant and sinking.

0:00:31.1 Dr. Beth Harris: Her clothes spread wide, grow wetter and wetter and heavier and heavier as she sinks, as she flows down the river to her death.

0:00:40.4 Dr. Steven Zucker: Look at the way that her head is back. Her mouth is slightly open, her eyes are half-closed, her hands, palm up, float in the water, and her hair becomes undone and spreads out across the water. It seems as if there’s no tension in her body. She’s given herself up to the river. And look at the color of that dress. It’s silvery, and it has almost the slightest hint of a purple, that works so beautifully against the brilliant greens that surround her. Notice the way that Ophelia is framed not only by the river, but by this dense foliage that is picked out with an extraordinary amount of specificity. There’s a level of detail, not only Ophelia’s features, not only her dress and the flowers that she holds, but all of the undergrowth on both sides of the river.

0:01:29.9 Dr. Beth Harris: This was really what was important about the new movement of Pre-Raphaelitism, of which Millais was a part. This was a group of artists founded in 1848, who were determined to change, to revolutionize British art. And one way of doing that was to dispense with received wisdom, with received formulas for how to paint, and instead to look carefully for themselves and bring a kind of individual vision and earnestness and seriousness to painting. And Millais does paint the background for this out of doors, which was a new development at this early moment, at around 1850 in England.

0:02:15.0 Dr. Steven Zucker: It might be hard in the 21st century to get a sense of how radical this painting would have seemed in its specificity, in its color, in the representation that is possible because the artist was outside. The traditional academies of Europe were teaching a style of painting that idealized, that generalized, and that relied on formulas. Instead, here’s an artist who’s confronting nature directly and trying to find a way to represent what he sees.

0:02:42.8 Dr. Beth Harris: Painting a canvas out of doors is no easy thing. We have an account of the difficulties from Millais himself. He wrote, “I sit tailor-fashion under an umbrella throwing a shade scarcely larger than a halfpenny for 11 hours, with a child’s mug within reach to satisfy my thirst from the running stream beside me. I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay. I am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water, and becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that lady sank to her muddy death. Together with the less likely total disappearance through the voracity of flies, there are two swans who do not a little add to my misery by persisting in watching me from the exact spot I wish to paint. Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than a hanging.”

0:03:37.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: It’s so funny, because we’re looking at this painting that is all about the beauty of nature, the tragedy of Ophelia. And yet here’s the artist, dealing with the most mundane difficulties. It’s hot. There are flies. He’s worried about falling in, and then he’s got these two damn swans.

0:03:53.5 Dr. Beth Harris: When we look at this, we’re keenly aware of the importance of plant life, of nature, of the fallen tree in the background that in its horizontal form mimics the form of Ophelia herself. But then those upright reeds that the light passes through, casting shadows on the surface of the water, these beautiful passages and intense coloration draw us into the multiplicity of nature.

0:04:22.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: There is no sky. The result is that we have an enclosed, quiet, private space. The only reference to sky can be seen in the lower left corner, where we see just a little bit of blue and a little bit of clouds in the quiet surface of the water, an area that is protected from the current by the reeds beside it. It’s interesting to note that at the very moment that the Pre-Raphaelites are emphasizing a kind of almost microscopic detail, there is simultaneously a revolution taking place in the way images are produced. The mid-19th century saw the explosion of the new technology of photography.

0:05:01.9 Dr. Steven Zucker: And one of the pioneers of English photography was William Henry Fox Talbot, who, just a few years before this painting was made, in an address to the public, said, “One advantage of the photographic art will be, that it will enable us to introduce into our pictures a multitude of minute details which add to the truth of the representation, but which no artist would take the trouble to copy faithfully from nature. Contenting himself with a general effect, he would probably deem it beneath his genius to copy every accident of light and shade, nor could he do so without a disproportionate expenditure of time and trouble.” And yet, here we see Millais taking that time and trouble, 11 hours a day on the edge of this river, making sure that every reed, that every flower, that every leaf is carefully delineated.

0:05:51.0 Dr. Beth Harris: It’s interesting to think about this period that Carlyle referred to as the Mechanical Age, and yet the Pre-Raphaelite artists are attempting to bring a kind of deeply felt poetry to their art, in a way, as a corrective to an age that felt mechanical, that felt mass-produced, and to bring a kind of sincerity and individual vision to their art.

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