The botanical accuracy of this painting is impressive, but its production wasn’t without its challenges for Millais.
Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851–52, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 111.8 cm (Tate Britain, London). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re in the Tate Britain, and we’re looking at John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia.” This is the quintessential Victorian and quintessential Pre-Raphaelite painting.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:14] It is, and the Victorians painted Shakespeare quite a lot. They even painted Ophelia quite a lot, but this is the painting that everybody remembers.
Dr. Zucker: [0:22] It’s that moment after Hamlet has murdered Ophelia’s father, and she has let herself fall into this river and is letting herself drown.
Dr. Harris: [0:30] Well, she goes mad after Hamlet murders her father and allows herself to drown. Shakespeare describes the place where that happens. He describes the flowers and the willow tree, and Millais picks up on that interest in the botanical setting and expands on it.
Dr. Zucker: [0:49] The botanical specificity, this is an artist who’s really taking Ruskin seriously.
Dr. Harris: [0:54] Ruskin advised artists to go to nature with singleness of heart, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.
Dr. Zucker: [1:01] That is, that nature itself has a spiritual power, and who are artists to mess with God’s work?
Dr. Harris: [1:07] That’s right, but that was the academic tradition, to take from nature and improve on it, and to idealize it. That was what, in fact, Reynolds had advised, that’s the foundation of the academic tradition.
Dr. Zucker: [1:18] And so Millais is completely rejecting that. He’s going into nature and he’s trying to be as true to what he sees as possible. It’s interesting, because when we think of painting plein air — that is, when we think of painting outside — we often think of late-19th-century French painting. We think of the Impressionists. But of course, the Pre-Raphaelites in England were taking this seriously mid-century.
Dr. Harris: [1:38] Millais found a spot that was very much like the one that Shakespeare described.
Dr. Zucker: [1:42] But it’s not as picturesque as it sounds. Painting outside is full of frustrations and difficulties. You have insects. You have weather variations. You have animals. Millais speaks about this with a wonderful sense of sarcasm in a letter that he wrote.
Dr. Harris: [1:56] Millais wrote, “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 muddy death.”
[2:11] [laughs]
Dr. Harris: [2:12] This is the funniest part, I think: “There are two swans who not a little add to my misery by persisting in watching me from the exact spot I wish to paint. My sudden perilous evolutions on the extreme bank to persuade them to evacuate their position have the effect of entirely deranging my temper, my pictures, brushes, and palette. Certainly, the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment for a murderer than a hanging.”
Dr. Zucker: [2:40] So we have Millais clearly at the end of his rope, trying to paint this image.
Dr. Harris: [2:44] The Pre-Raphaelites often show us images of solitary women expressing feelings of longing and frustration and, in this case, madness.
[2:54] The model for this is the woman who’d become Rosetti’s wife, and who was his model and muse, Elizabeth Siddal. She apparently posed for him in a bathtub that they kept warm with some candles underneath, although she did get sick as the water did eventually get cold.
Dr. Zucker: [3:09] I know he was quite proud of the dress that he had bought for her to wear, which was already an antique that was embroidered heavily with silver and is beautifully rendered here, as it floats and almost becomes like the water weeds that we see around.
[3:21] In fact, this painting was really praised in its day for being perhaps the most faithful to nature in terms of its botanical accuracy. We can see clearly not only a large willow tree that has fallen and then has regrown, and it’s actually wonderful to look at the way that those upturned roots mimic the pose of Ophelia’s arms.
Dr. Harris: [3:40] And we see lots of flowers that we can identify very specifically.
Dr. Zucker: [3:44] And that have symbolic purpose.
Dr. Harris: [3:46] Right, we see forget-me-nots; and poppies, which are a symbol of death; and violets, which are a symbol of faithfulness.
Dr. Zucker: [3:55] In fact, she’s got a chain of violets around her neck, which comes directly from the Shakespearean play.
Dr. Harris: [4:00] The symbolic meaning of all of the flowers would have been understood by the Victorian public.
Dr. Zucker: [4:06] Interestingly, it links all the way back to Shakespeare, who, as you said, is very specific as well about some of the flowers that are mentioned.
Dr. Harris: [4:12] Ophelia floats with her palms upturned. She’s not dead yet. Her eyes are open and she seems to be floating down the river. But there are lovely passages when you look closely, not only at the flowers, but especially in the lower left, where we see the light moving through those reeds that are growing up in the water.
[4:32] The intensity of the colors and the specificity, both of those things would have been new and rather shocking to the Victorian public.
Dr. Zucker: [4:40] Part of that was achieved because the Pre-Raphaelites rejected the traditional mode of painting, that is, painting on a dark ground. Instead, they painted on a brilliant white ground, and some of that luminosity comes through.
[4:53] In addition, some of these artists painted not on a dry white ground, but on a ground that was still wet, which meant that that white is picked up by the colors and creates this vivid luminousness.
Dr. Harris: [5:05] And so the Pre-Raphaelites really were revolutionary. We love them now, and they seem very familiar to us, but they seemed really radical back in the late 1840s and 1850s.
[5:16] [music]
A Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece
Ophelia is considered to be one of the great masterpieces of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Combining his interest in Shakespearean subjects with intense attention to natural detail, Millais created a powerful and memorable image. His selection of the moment in the play Hamlet when Ophelia, driven mad by Hamlet’s murder of her father, drowns herself was very unusual for the time. However, it allowed Millais to show off both his technical skill and artistic vision.
Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52, oil on canvas, 762 x 111.8 cm (Tate Britain, London)
The figure of Ophelia floats in the water, her mid section slowly beginning to sink. Clothed in an antique dress that the artist purchased specially for the painting, the viewer can clearly see the weight of the fabric as it floats, but also helps to pull her down. Her hands are in the pose of submission, accepting of her fate.
Ophelia (detail), Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52, oil on canvas, 762 x 111.8 cm (Tate Britain, London)
She is surrounded by a variety of summer flowers and other botanicals, some of which were explicitly described in Shakespeare’s text, while others are included for their symbolic meaning. For example, the ring of violets around Ophelia’s neck is a symbol of faithfulness, but can also refer to chastity and death.
The hazards of painting outdoors
Painted outdoors near Ewell in Surrey, Millais began the background of the painting in July of 1851. He reported that he got up everyday at 6 am, began work at 8, and did not return to his lodgings until 7 in the evening. He also recounted the problems of working outdoors in letters to his friend Mrs. Combe, later published in the biography of Millais by his son J.G. Millais.
“I sit tailor-fashion under an umbrella throwing a shadow scarcely larger than a halfpenny for eleven 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.”
The hazards of being an artist’s model
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal painting at an easel, pencil on paper, 1850s, 25 x 20.3 cm (private collection)
His problems did not end when he returned to his studio in mid-October to paint the figure of Ophelia. His model was Elizabeth Siddal who the Pre-Raphaelite artists met through their friend Walter Howell Deverell, who had been impressed by her appearance and asked her to model for him.
When she met the Pre-Raphaelites Siddal was working in a hat shop, but she later became a painter and poet in her own right. She also become the wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Millais had Siddal floating in a bath of warm water kept hot with lamps under the tub. However, one day the lamps went out without being noticed by the engrossed Millais. Siddal caught cold, and her father threatened legal action for damages until Millais agreed to pay the doctor’s bills.
Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of his Parents, 1849–50, oil on canvas, 86.4 x 139.7 cm (Tate Britain, London)
Millais becomes a success
Ophelia proved to be a more successful painting for Millais than some of his earlier works, such as Christ in the House of his Parents. It had already been purchased when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. Critical opinion, under the influence of John Ruskin, was also beginning to swing in the direction of the PRB (the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood). The following year, Millais was elected to be an Associate of the Royal Academy, an event that Rossetti considered to be the end of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Ophelia (detail), Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52, oil on canvas, 762 x 111.8 cm (Tate Britain, London)
The execution of Ophelia shows the Pre-Raphaelite style at its best. Each reed swaying in the water, every leaf and flower are the product of direct and exacting observation of nature. As we watch the drowning woman slowly sink into the murky water, we experience the tinge of melancholy so common in Victorian art. It is in his ability to combine the ideals of the Pre-Raphaelites with Victorian sensibilities that Millais excels. His depiction of Ophelia is as unforgettable as the character herself.
