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Background:
John Everett Millais
(8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was born in Southampton on 8 June 1829. His
family was of (Jersey) French descent.
Millais was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders
of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (art movement).
While still a youth, he won various awards and medals for
his drawings. His prodigious artistic
talent won him a place at some of the top art schools throughout England. In
1838 he attended Henry Sass' Drawing School and the Royal Academy in 1840. His first painting was Pizzarro Seizing the
Inca of Peru, 1846. While at the Royal
Academy, he met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti with whom he
formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (known as the "PRB") in
September 1848 in his family home on Gower Street, off Bedford Square.
Ophelia, begun in the summer of 1851 and exhibited the
following year at the Royal Academy, marks the culmination of Millais' youthful
period. Endowed with a virtuoso technical skill and encouraged by Ruskin, he
rapidly outstripped his Brotherhood colleagues and won lasting fame. He was
elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1863 and served as President in 1896.
Millais' works never failed to elicit praise. His remarkable
technique lent his canvases a unique distinction, particularly in his last
paintings, long after the exhilaration of the radiant Pre-Raphaelite period had
died away. Towards the end of his life, he turned to portraiture. He was also a
fine illustrator.
Millais died of throat cancer in London on 13 August 1896.
Ophelia (1852):
Although not given much credit by the Royal Academy,
Millais' painting Ophelia is probably one of the best-known paintings in the
Tate Britain gallery in London today.
Ophelia, completed in 1852 (oil on canvas), depicts Ophelia, a character
from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing while floating in a river just before
she drowns. The scene is described in Act IV, Scene VII of the play in a speech
by Queen Gertrude.
This scene depicted does not take place on stage, but only
exists in Gertrude’s description:
Ophelia was strolling along a local riverbank collecting
flowers, when she accidentally slipped into the river. At first, Ophelia lies in the water singing
songs, as if unaware of her danger ("incapable of her own distress").
Her clothes, trapping air, have allowed her to temporarily stay afloat
("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."
Ophelia's death has been praised as one of the most
dramatic, poetically written death scenes in all of literature. Millais decided to take on the challenge of
depicting this scene, and putting it on paper via art.
The painting is widely known for the detailed flowers along
the river and riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a
natural ecosystem. This type of natural/
environmental stress and effect was quintessential of Millais’ style, and the
Pre- Raphaelite movement as a whole.
Symbolism:
Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze— greatly
symbolizes religion. This classic pose
resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, but has also been
interpreted as erotic.
The flowers shown floating along Ophelia in the river are
supposed to represent and correspond with Shakespeare’s description of
Ophelia’s garland. They are also meant
to represent the Victorian interest in “the language of flowers”, where every
flower carried a distinct meaning.
For instance, the red poppy flowers represent sleep and
death.
Reaction:
At first, the painting, Ophelia, was not given much praise
at the Royal Academy and worldwide.
Critics claimed that the depiction of Hamlet’s, Ophelia, did not do
justice, as it seemed she was just lying there dead in a “weedy ditch”. Critics argued that Millais’ painting of
Ophelia robbed “the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and
beauty.” They also criticized the
landscape of the painting, saying that it was too raw and natural.
Impact:
Although, not given much publicity and recognition at first,
as time went on, people began to appreciate the beautiful painting of Ophelia
(by Millais). Many people refer to it
now as a considerable thing of beauty.
**The painting has been widely referenced and pastiched in
art, film and photography
