Ophelia (painting)

Ophelia (painting)
Title	Ophelia
Artist	Sir John Everett Millais
Year	1851–1852
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	76.2 cm × 111.8 cm
Location	Tate Britain, London

Ophelia (painting) is an oil painting by Sir John Everett Millais completed in 1852 depicting a scene from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The work portrays the character Ophelia singing as she floats in a river and is noted for its meticulous botanical detail, vivid color, and association with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The painting established Millais's reputation and provoked debate among critics, artists, and public figures in Victorian Britain and across Europe.

Background and Subject

Millais painted the image of Ophelia while associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood alongside figures such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Ruskin. The subject derives from Act IV, Scene VII of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, a play central to English literature and performed at venues such as the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House. Millais consulted contemporary theatrical productions and editions of Shakespeare edited by scholars like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Knight. The representation of Ophelia engages with Victorian anxieties about femininity, mental illness, and tragic heroines noted in works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Versions and Attribution

Multiple versions and copies of Millais's Ophelia exist, including the prime canvas now held at Tate Britain and preparatory studies housed in collections such as the Ashmolean Museum and the Tate Archive. Collaborators and contemporaries—Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and Edward Burne-Jones—produced sketches and related works responding to the subject. Attribution debates have involved collectors like Samuel Mendel and institutions such as the National Gallery, while auction houses including Christie's and Sotheby's have handled related works. Later artists including John William Waterhouse and Gustav Klimt created paintings of Ophelia that cite Millais's composition, complicating provenance narratives and the study of influence.

Composition and Technique

Millais executed the background outdoors on the Hogsmill River near Epsom, with botanical accuracy achieved through field studies and herbarium specimens. The figure was painted indoors from a model, Elizabeth Siddal, posed on a makeshift platform, employing techniques influenced by Titian and the Venetian colorists observed in galleries such as the National Gallery and the Louvre. Millais's use of layered glazing, fine brushwork, and sharp contours reflects Pre-Raphaelite doctrines promoted in manifestos by Hunt and Rossetti. Technical examinations by conservators at institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum and scientific analyses using infrared reflectography and x-radiography have revealed pentimenti and underdrawing consistent with Millais's practice.

Iconography and Interpretation

The painting's iconography draws on Shakespearean sources, botanical symbolism cataloged by 19th-century naturalists such as John Lindley and William Hooker, and Victorian pictorial traditions of mourning found in the work of artists like J. M. W. Turner and George Frederick Watts. Flowers depicted—poppies, daisies, violets, and rosemary—have been read in relation to themes of sleep, innocence, remembrance, and fidelity, connecting to poetic treatments by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Psychoanalytic readings invoking Sigmund Freud and later feminist critiques referencing the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf interpret Ophelia as emblematic of patriarchal constraint and the representation of female madness. Iconographic studies by art historians at universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard have examined the interplay between textual source and pictorial invention.

Provenance and Exhibition History

After completion Millais's painting passed through private collections, including ownership by dealers and patrons active in the London art market, before acquisition by public institutions culminating in its display at Tate Britain. The canvas featured in major exhibitions at venues like the Royal Academy of Arts, the Manchester Art Gallery, and international loans to the Musée d'Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exhibition catalogues and museum archives document loans, conservation campaigns, and the painting's role in retrospectives on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Victorian art, and Shakespearean visual culture.

Reception and Influence

Contemporary reception mixed praise from supporters such as John Ruskin—who defended Pre-Raphaelite fidelity to nature—and scorn from critics at periodicals like The Athenaeum and satirists in magazines such as Punch. The painting influenced later painters including John William Waterhouse, Walter Sickert, and Édouard Manet, and inspired literary responses by poets like Christina Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Its image has permeated popular culture through reproductions, stage designs for productions at the Globe Theatre, filmic homages in cinema such as adaptations of Hamlet and encounters in photographic practice by Julia Margaret Cameron. The painting remains central in debates at academic conferences and in scholarship across art history departments and cultural institutions.

Category:Paintings by John Everett Millais Category:Victorian paintings Category:Paintings based on Hamlet