Ophelia by Millais: Symbolism and Pre-Raphaelite Art Explained

Plein air painting captures 'street atmosphere' and creates luminous effects when brought indoors, as colors are more naturally balanced. Water surfaces create 'hot' reflections from orange light sources, appearing as glowing warm spots. Folds and creases on the body create warm reflections even when photographs don't show them—this is a key advantage of painting over photography. White areas contain significant color variations; white in shadow is not truly white but a very light color. The body appears to glow through clothing by using color reflections, creating rosy tones in shadow areas. Bone structure in hands and fingers should be suggested rather than creating 'shank-like' forms. Complementary colors like lilac and green create beautiful visual harmony—lilac serves as an excellent underpainting for green. Even when colors aren't visible in photographs, the artist can use them to enhance visual appeal.

Plein air painting of mountain landscapes requires working from the farthest elements to the nearest, using color and tonal relationships to create depth perception, with distant mountains appearing lighter and less saturated while foreground elements become darker and more saturated; artists should save their tonal best for last and embrace simplification when painting grand scenes on small panels.

Plein air painting originated in France in the 1870s as part of the Impressionist movement, where artists took their easels outside to paint light and air in response to nature. This art form experienced a revival in the last 20-30 years after being largely abandoned during the mid-20th century modern art period. Plein air painting can be both rewarding and relaxing, almost like a meditation when approached correctly.

Plein air painting (painting outdoors) presents unique challenges including rapidly changing light conditions, weather limitations, and time constraints. The artist demonstrates how to adapt when traditional equipment is unavailable by creating an improvised easel using a broomstick and spoons. The process begins with underpainting to establish proportions using a single color, followed by simplifying complex forms into basic shapes. The artist emphasizes working quickly to capture fleeting light effects, inspired by Impressionist techniques where artists paint directly onto the canvas while light changes.

En plein air painting (French for painting in the open air) involves creating artwork directly from nature, with artists placing background elements like sky and clouds first, then adding foreground details such as water and vegetation; there is no single correct approach to painting, as some artists work alla prima (all at once) while others build up layers over time, and natural elements like water may appear green due to algae, while trees should be painted gray rather than brown.

The later Pre-Raphaelites developed a new aesthetic philosophy, moving away from narrative toward purely decorative imagery. The idea that a painting could be beautiful simply as an aesthetic object, regardless of its subject matter, represented a revolutionary concept for the 19th century. Jane Morris was portrayed as Proserpina, carrying complex personal symbolism about her position between marriage and Rossetti's love. Burne-Jones, the only Pre-Raphaelite to achieve international fame, represented the final phase closest to Symbolism and Modernism, bridging the gap between Pre-Raphaelite naturalism and purely decorative art.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti abandoned early political radicalism and Pre-Raphaelite truth-telling later in his career, embracing what one might call a religion of beauty. His painting 'Proserpine' (1881-2) depicts the Roman goddess Persephone, abducted by Pluto to Hades, who must return six months annually after tasting pomegranates. Rossetti inscribed his own poem in the corner, demonstrating his dual identity as poet and painter. The painting creates a single figure who is both resplendent and melancholic—luxurious yet troubled—a poetic ambivalence representing both hope and death. This work belongs to the aesthetic movement prioritizing form and color over political engagement.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in 1828 to an Italian father, a former Carbonari revolutionary and professor of Italian at King's College London, and an English mother from the distinguished Polidori literary family. His brother John Polidori was Lord Byron's physician and author of the first European vampire novel. The family spoke multiple languages and read Dante aloud daily, creating an environment where composing poetry was natural before learning arithmetic. Rossetti wrote dramas as a child and a complete short story by age 15. His parents expected literary fame rather than artistic success, and he was labeled 'the chosen one' from infancy, a position that created vulnerability and eventually developed into a persecution complex. In 1848, he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, a secret society of seven artists who rejected the Royal Academy's smooth, brown-toned historical paintings. They advocated for a return to early 15th-century Florentine art, emphasizing simplicity, clarity, and pure detail. Their symbol, the Latin abbreviation PRB, was signed on their canvases and became the subject of scandal when its meaning was revealed. By age 20, Rossetti had completed poems, watercolors, and a few canvases but had no commissions, no reputation, and no money. His family provided limited support, with his father working as an emigrant on a university salary and four children. To become a Royal Academician, he needed allies, which he found through his association with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. In late 1849, Rossetti met Lizzie Siddal, a young woman with red hair, pale skin, and a determined expression, working in a hat shop near Leicester Square. She posed for Millais's 'Ophelia' (1851), lying in a bathtub with water for hours. When the lamps went out during a session, she remained in the cold water until the end, suffering a health crisis that would affect her permanently. Rossetti saw her around 1850, first as a model, then as a student he taught to draw and write poetry. She became his mistress without marriage or official registration, a relationship that Victorian England disapproved of. This ambiguous relationship lasted 10 years, with Lizzie being neither wife, model, nor friend, but something in between that satisfied and burdened both. In 1854, Rossetti began teaching at the Working Men's College, founded by Christian socialist Frederick Denison Maurice, where he taught working men and craftsmen. This was his only experience of formal teaching, and at the same college, Edward Burne-Jones became his student in 1856. Rossetti's teaching created a network of artistic influence. Burne-Jones worked for William Morris, who founded Morris & Co. in 1861. Burne-Jones would work for Morris for 30 years, creating stained glass and panel paintings. Rossetti taught Burne-Jones, who worked for Morris, who married the woman who would later become Rossetti's lover. This created a closed circle of artistic influence. By the early 1860s, Rossetti was about 30 years old and Lizzie was ill with tuberculosis. On May 23, 1860, he married her in Hastings without a grand wedding, in the presence of only a few witnesses. The delay in marriage had been due to his mother's Italian directness, family expectations of propriety, and the attitudes of his academic friends who looked down on Lizzie. Before Lizzie's death in 1862, two other women entered Rossetti's life, both remaining with him until the end. One was the daughter of an Oxford stableman, the other the daughter of a blacksmith from rural England. In October 1857, at a performance of a touring London company at Oxford's city theater, Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones noticed two sisters, Jane and Bessie Burden, daughters of a stableman. The family lived in a narrow passage in Oxford. The girls had received almost no education beyond household duties and were expected to work as servants or hat shop assistants. Rossetti and Burne-Jones, who were painting frescoes in the Oxford Union debating hall, approached them and invited Jane to pose for their Arthurian-themed frescoes. Jane Morris had an unconventional face by Victorian standards: long neck, heavy lower jaw, dark curly hair, and a serious gaze. Rossetti found her face uniquely his own. She agreed to pose, first for Rossetti's Ginevra, then for William Morris. After her engagement to Morris in April 1859, she transformed herself: she took private lessons, learned French and Italian fluently, and mastered the piano. From a daughter of a stableman, she became a lady of the Victorian circle. Rossetti held three women in his circle: Lizzie as his wife, Jane as his friend and model married to another man, and Fanny Cornforth as his mistress. Each received a different role: Lizzie was his wife, Jane was his friend and model, and Fanny was his mistress. Only two of them knew about each other. Lizzie was already drinking laudanum, and within two years she would die from it.

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was a leading British painter and designer associated with the later Pre-Raphaelite movement, whose dreamlike figures, medieval subjects, and refined decorative language helped shape the visual character of the aesthetic movement; he transformed the intense naturalism of the movement's founders into a more inward, poetic, and deliberately timeless art, creating an imaginative world that spoke directly to the anxieties, longings, and spiritual uncertainty of his age through his collaboration with William Morris and his designs for stained glass, tapestries, mosaics, furniture, tiles, jewelry, and book illustrations.

The emergence of Ophelia as an icon for the plight of real women was first made popular by John Everett Millais's celebrated painting finished around 1851. With more than fifty portrayals recorded in exhibition catalogues, Ophelia became the single most popular literary subject for artists in the 19th century. Situated within nature, disheveled and frail, the Victorian Ophelia iterates a forceful call to ethical responsibility. Shakespeare was understood to be the voice of moral enlightenment. Within twenty years, Hamlet would be overtaken by females and female issues, with Sarah Bernhardt famously playing Hamlet to rave reviews, as the ideal of woman as arbiter of moral rectitude had been firmly established in society.

John Everett Millais's painting 'Ophelia' (1851-1852) became one of the most reproduced artworks of the 19th century, embodying Victorian ideals of female fragility and passivity. The painting depicts Ophelia from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' floating in water after being rejected by Hamlet and losing her father. The image showed a woman with pale, diaphanous features, floating passively in water, surrounded by flowers. This visual representation reinforced the idea that women were physically and emotionally fragile, unable to survive without male support, and that their proper fate was passive death rather than active engagement with the world.

This segment explores the tragic story of Ophelia, a character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and its transformation into one of art history's most famous paintings. Ophelia, daughter of Polonius and lover of Prince Hamlet, suffers mental breakdown after Hamlet kills her father and spurns her. She drowns in the river, singing old songs while floating. John Everett Millais painted 'Ophelia' between 1851-1852, spending five months capturing nature's details with unprecedented precision. The painting depicts her peaceful death, surrounded by insects and flowers, becoming a symbol of tragic beauty.

Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet represents the archetype of the tragic, passive woman. She is described as a young, vulnerable woman who becomes increasingly fragile and ultimately drowns in a stream surrounded by flowers. The speaker notes that it is unclear whether Ophelia committed suicide or died by accident, but her image - lying posed like Snow White in her coffin - has become a powerful symbol of female beauty intertwined with death and passivity.

Victorian psychiatrists were fascinated with Shakespeare's Ophelia because she symbolized femininity and madness in the 19th century, when mental illness was typically gendered as feminine; diagnoses like lovesickness and hysteria were associated with women, and many psychiatrists of the era wrote their own interpretations of Shakespeare's plays, with some like Hugh Diamond using Shakespeare's work to inform both their psychiatric practice and photography.