She talks a lot about her father, and says that she’s heard of dishonorable incidents after his death. Leslie Parris (ed.), The Pre-Raphaelites, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994, pp.96–8, reproduced in colour.ĭoes this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.She’s insistent and very distressed. Ophelia was part of the original Henry Tate gift to the Tate Gallery.įurther reading John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899, I, pp.116–20, 123, 129–131, 144–7, 151, 162–3. You may imagine it is something rather good when I tell you it cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds’ (J.G. Millais wrote to Thomas Combe in March 1852: ‘Today I have purchased a really splendid lady's ancient dress - all flowered over in silver embroidery - and I am going to paint it for “Ophelia”. Violets, which Ophelia wears in a chain around her neck, stand for faithfulness, chastity or death of the young, any of which meanings could apply here. The willow, nettle and daisy are associated with forsaken love, pain, and innocence. The roses near Ophelia's cheek and dress, and the field rose on the bank, may allude to her brother Laertes calling her 'rose of May'. The plants, most of which have symbolic significance, were depicted with painstaking botanical detail. Her father threatened the artist with legal action until he agreed to pay the doctor's bills. The lamps went out on one occasion, causing her to catch a severe cold.
#A X WORD IN THE BOOK OPHELIA FULL#
The model, Elizabeth Siddal, a favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites who later married Rossetti, was required to pose over a four month period in a bath full of water kept warm by lamps underneath. The figure of Ophelia was added afterwards.
Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging. 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, together with the (less likely) total disappearance, through the voracity of the flies. I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay. The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh. My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced. Millais quickly found, however, that such intense study was not without problems, and was moved to remark in a letter to Mrs Thomas Combe, In accordance with the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he painted with close observation of nature. Millais began the background in July 1851, at Ewell, Surrey.
Arthur Hughes exhibited his version of her death scene in the same year as this picture was shown (Manchester City Art Gallery). Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic-romantic figure of Ophelia from Hamlet was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in Royal Academy exhibitions. 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 indued 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. 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. The scene depicted is from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene vii, in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns:
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