100 Works Of Art I Like # Post 4
Title: Ophelia
Artist: John Everett Millais
Date: 1851-52
Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 76.2 cm × 111.8 cm
Some history background: I don't know what exactly to say about the history behind this painting... The figure is Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the "lover" of Hamlet who went mad and commited suicide by drowning in the river. And that is the moment that Millais used for this painting. The only interesting historical aspect of the painting I can think of is that of the model for Ophelia, Elizabeth Siddal, an artist's model, poet and painter. Siddal was well acquianted with the Pre-Raphaelite circle as she worked as model for Millais, Hunt, Deverell and Rosseti, her lover. She was 19 when she modeled for that painting and Millais had her lie in a bathtub clothed. He worked on the painting when it was winter so to keep the water warm, Millais placed oil candles close to the tub to warm the water. However, he was so engrossed in his work (or by his infatuation with Effie as you see in Desperate Romantics) that he forgot to replace the candles and Siddal caught a severe cold and her father demanded from Millais £50 for medical expenses (a lot of money at the time) but as we learn from Millais' son, her father later accepted a smaller amount.
Also, I know that Millais worked on the painting in two parts, one for the background and one for the figure of Ophelia. The place he chose for the background was the banks of the Hogsmill Riverl in Ewell, very close to the place where William Holman Hunt painted "The Light of the World."
I personally really like that painting not only for its beauty but also for its meaning, what Ophelia is at this moment. Ophelia in Hamlet was a very weak character, a victim in the power play that took place around her by men. She has become the symbol of feminity in despair, used and betrayed by her father and lover, she loses her mind because she cannot stand reality and eventually flees of this world. And that is the only moment in the play to me, that she manages to steal the readers' attention from all the men that have dominated her. Lying for.ever on her back in a stream, flowers floating beside her, she is perfected.
In Millais' painting the palms of her hands open upwards suggesting that she is abandoning herself to some higher force. But seen together with her partially opened lips, these hands evoke something else as well. Perhaps she is in the process of receiving something; perhaps she is caught in a moment of solitary enjoyment. Above all, she is making a statement. She is on display for an implicit spectator. Her immaculately posed body says "look at me", less in reproach than in pride. She knows her performance is aesthetically pleasing. She knows that in our minds, she will survive as a beautiful dead body.
Although I am a feminist and I like strong women, I cannot say that I hate weak women. Because.. not everyone can be strong. It's not a crime to be weak. Or a coward. Ophelia has been weak for me throughout her whole life and presence in the play but her death, her death is the only moment that she manages to go against what others wanted of her. She may play perfectely the role of the weak woman that everyone expects her to be but her death is a shock, is something she is not ordered, expected or manipulated to do...
...it is not her choice either though. It is because of her madness, the state of mind that men with their expectations and ambitions pushed her to, that she commits suicide/ or has that fateful accident that cost her her life. In Gertrude's words, the way we learn of her death, Ophelia did not choose death but simply gave in to the laws of gravity.The breaking of a twig caused her to fall, and as her garments became heavy with the stream’s water, she was pulled to her muddy grave. Yet for a moment the wide-spread clothes sustained her while she chanted melodies, as if unaware of her precarious situation.
The focus of Millais' version isn't this curious interlude between life and death. His Ophelia is completely immobile. She isn't singing, nor is she slowly drowning. Instead, she is caught in a realm that obeys neither the laws of gravity nor those of mimetic representation. The water around her is perfectly calm. The flowers that have glided from her hand and are now covering her belly and her sex seem hyper-real, superimposed on the musky rendition of the submerged body parts. The right hand seems detached; its texture different from the chin and neck, it floats on its own. The richly embroidered blouse, making the breasts imperceptible, is pure materiality. A body fragment. Bothe Ophelia's life and death have been arrested. She lies forever suspended along the liquid boundary.
And yet, the theme of death is there, not only because you know what happens from the story, or because you suspect that this woman is in some kind of danger but also because it is stated inside the painting.
This, with a bit of difficulty I admit, is a skull, the symbol of death.
On a slightly lighter note, the painting was done during the Victoran Era, when the flower language, the idea that every flower has a certain meaning, and although Shakespeare also talks about the flowers beside ophelia, the red poppy is not among these flowers. Millais used the red poppy that represents in the Victorian flower language, sleep and death. It's still May, the month of flowers so I felt like saying this. XD
