Millais's Ophelia: A Pre-Raphaelite Masterpiece Explained

Elizabeth Siddal (1828-1862) was a pioneering Victorian artist who became the most famous Pre-Raphaelite muse after posing for John Everett Millais' iconic painting 'Ophelia' at age 22; despite lacking formal art training, she developed her own artistic talents under Dante Gabriel Rossetti's guidance and contributed to the first Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 1857, yet her legacy was overshadowed by her tragic death at 33 from a laudanum overdose following the loss of her newborn daughter.

Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) was a talented artist and poet who became the most famous muse of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, particularly to Dante Gabriel Rossetti; despite her artistic genius and deep love for Rossetti, her working-class background, family opposition, and health struggles led to her tragic death by laudanum overdose in 1862, leaving behind a legacy of beautiful poetry and paintings that continue to captivate audiences today.

Elizabeth Siddal began as a milliner who made hats, then was discovered by Walter Deverel in London Street and invited to model. She modeled for Deverel in images from Twelfth Night, for Millay in Ophelia, and for William Holman Hunt. She became artistic collaborators with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who initially taught her to paint and then they worked on works together. They also cultivated a shared interest in poetry. Siddal's biography has dominated perceptions of her, similar to a 19th-century Sylvia Plath figure, with a fraught relationship with Rossetti, depression, marriage, and death by drugs overdose shortly after a miscarriage in 1862. Recent scholarship argues she should be viewed as an artist rather than simply through her biography. Her poetry, though unpublished in her lifetime and existing in multiple manuscript fragments, can be read as an engagement with Ophelia, picking up imagery from Ophelia scenes in Hamlet and Millay's painting: the cruel green grasses, the floating body, the river running between grassy banks, the fading to sleep and death.

Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) was a Victorian artist and poet who became the iconic model for John Everett Millais' famous painting 'Ophelia,' but her story extends far beyond her role as a muse; she was a talented artist in her own right who fought against the constraints of Victorian society, yet ultimately fell victim to the very system that exploited her, dying at 32 from laudanum overdose and later having her body exhumed by her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti to recover his poetry manuscript.

Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) was a model and artist discovered by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who became the muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; despite her talent and their passionate relationship, she suffered from health issues, Laudanum addiction, and family opposition to their marriage, ultimately dying at age 32 in mysterious circumstances that remain debated as either accidental overdose or suicide, with her body later exhumed in 1869 revealing remarkably preserved remains.

In the second half of the 19th century, Realism emerged as a major movement reacting against Romanticism's emotion and drama. Realism aimed to show life as it actually was, often depicting peasants, common people, and disadvantaged classes with somber tones and without theatricality. Impressionism, which some consider the beginning of modern art, broke with painting academy rules that dictated naturalistic representations. Impressionists represented what they saw under various atmospheric conditions, showing the same landscape at different times and seasons.

Realism in European art of the mid-19th century formed as a complete artistic system with established principles and categories, primarily in France. The European Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 catalyzed this transformation by causing the failure of romantic ideals among the intelligentsia. Realism fundamentally opposed romanticism by replacing vague, elevated ideals with clear, simple ones, focusing on everyday life, the common people, and the working person. The romantic hero, who rebelled against society and sought ideals in the past or fantasies, was replaced by the everyday person whose small struggles and sorrows became the primary artistic subject. In France, the Barbizon School, including artists like Daubigny, Rousseau, and Dupré, pioneered realistic landscape painting by painting en plein air and depicting nature as it truly existed, opening up the beauty of rural France for their contemporaries and serving as precursors to Impressionism.

This section covers the major art movements of the 19th century. Realism in literature focused on depicting life as it really was, rejecting idealism and make-believe, with key authors including Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Ibsen. In art, the most important artists created art for art's sake, not for patrons. France remained the center of the art world with artists sending work to the Paris Salon. Key realist artists included Gustave Courbet (Stone Breakers), Jean-François Millet (The Gleaners), Honoré Daumier (Third-Class Carriage), and Edouard Manet (Luncheon on the Grass, considered the first modernist painter). Impressionism began as artists who rejected mainstream studios and painted nature directly, capturing how life felt in a moment rather than just how it looked. Influenced by photography and new physics theories, key artists included Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet (Impression, Sunrise), Edgar Degas, and Auguste Renoir.

Painting experienced the greatest changes in the shortest time during the 19th century, with the art of painting translating the trepidating pulse of social and political changes. Artists, public academies, curators, workshops, critics, and exhibitions experienced a special spring that made Paris the European capital of painting. In the last years of the 18th century, symptoms of change were perceptible through figures like Blake and especially Goya, whose artistic expression escaped any attempt at classification. Neoclassicism, with Jacques-Louis David as its clearest exponent, became identified with the Napoleonic Empire. Romanticism represented a fundamental break, with Delacroix at its head and The Raft of the Medusa exemplifying the new aesthetic. Around 1848, Realism emerged, opposing idealism and focusing on the worker and peasant. Courbet, author of The Burial at Ornans, was a key figure. The landscape became a ferment for painting's renewal when it sought above all light and color, opening the path to en plein air painting and the birth of Impressionism.

Realism believed literature and art should depict life as it really was, reacting to failed revolutions of 1848-49 and loss of idealism. In France, Balzac wrote 'The Human Comedy' depicting urban society as grasping and brutal. Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' portrayed provincial middle class as petty and hypocritical. Zola's 'Germinal' depicted working-class life seamy and animalistic. In England, Dickens wrote 'Hard Times' portraying workers' grim lives. George Eliot examined how people are shaped by social class and inner strivings. Thomas Hardy wrote 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' about a woman ostracized for pre-marital sex. In Russia, Leo Tolstoy portrayed fatalistic history but valued love, trust, and family. Henrik Ibsen, father of modern drama, examined conditions of life and morality at odds with Victorian views. The most important artists of the 19th and 20th centuries created art for 'art's sake,' exercising virtual artistic freedom by selling to the public rather than relying on patrons. France dominated the realist art movement, which sought to portray life as it really was, not idealized. Gustav Courbet coined 'realism' with 'The Stone Breakers' (1849), showing workers breaking stones. Francois Millet painted 'The Gleaners' (1857) showing peasants working fields. Daumier painted 'The Third Class Carriage' (1862) showing regular people. Edgar Degas painted laundresses. Edouard Manet bridged realism and impressionism, with 'Luncheon on the Grass' (1863) shocking audiences by portraying a female nude in an everyday setting. His 'Olympia' (1863) was equally revolting for its casual nude portrayal of a prostitute. Impressionism was one of the most famous artistic movements, developed in France with photography's impact. Artists moved away from perfectly capturing subjects to capturing momentary impressions of light falling on scenes. They focused on landscapes and dissolved form into color and light. Paintings were completed quickly with visible brush strokes. Oil paints in tubes enabled plein air painting (outdoor painting). Claude Monet was the most famous impressionist, with 'Impression, Sunrise' (1873) considered the first impressionist painting. He is best known for 'Water Lilies' (1906). Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' (1876) showing people having fun. Camille Pissarro is considered the true founder of impressionism. Berthe Morisot focused on domestic scenes and portraits.

William Morris, a key Pre-Raphaelite, later became one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement, which opposed the degradation of design. He even opened a factory called 'Morris and Company' that produced various design items including textiles and wallpapers, often with plant elements, so that people could feel as if they were in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Morris became a very influential figure in design and spread Pre-Raphaelite ideas into this field. The Pre-Raphaelites' lasting legacy in art was their creation of a new type of female beauty—beautiful, calm, and distant, and in later works, even mystical, fatal, and dangerous.

The Arts & Crafts Movement, led by William Morris and Philip Webb in the late 19th century, emerged as a reaction against the Industrial Revolution's cheap, mass-produced goods, promoting honest craftsmanship and functional beauty; this movement celebrated the medieval guild system, practical design (as seen in Standen House), and included pioneering women designers like the Garrett cousins, ultimately inspiring the formation of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and leaving a lasting legacy on design and heritage preservation.

William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones studied together in Oxford in the early 1850s, fascinated by the Middle Ages and wanting to bring beauty and craftsmanship back to everyday life. In 1861, Morris founded a firm of Fine Art Workmen producing painted furniture, tapestries, wallpaper, and stained glass. Through writings and practice, Morris gave birth to the Arts and Crafts movement, whose influence spread worldwide. Burne-Jones made two large drawings for Ruskin proposing a 'tapestry room' based on Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women,' featuring 14-15 figures in wool on green serge background. Ruskin paid for Burne-Jones and his wife to visit Italy to study Titian and Veronese, seeing him as a father-figure. John Ruskin received artistic education considered suitable for a Victorian gentleman but took drawing seriously with tremendous powers of observation and sensitive eye for colour. He loved the natural world and studied it scientifically, writing extensively about Gothic and Romanesque architecture, believing medieval irregularities indicated craftsmen's freedom unlike the factory system. In July 1853, he worked side by side with John Everett Millais in the Trossachs, drawing gneiss rock starting with pencil, adding pen outlines, ink wash shadows, and white bodycolour highlights.

William Morris was born in 1834 in a small village near London during Queen Victoria's reign. He came from a bourgeois family and spent his childhood exploring the English countryside. In 1851, at age 17, he witnessed the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, which showcased industrial products from around the world. Morris refused to attend, viewing it as a symbol of everything he despised: mass-produced goods of poor quality, alienated workers, and the triumph of industrial capitalism. At Oxford, he studied theology but preferred medieval history and architecture. Like many of his era, Morris saw in medieval values of chivalry and community a counter-model to the mercantile values of industrial capitalism. In 1857, Morris met Jane Burden and married her two years later. She became the muse for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Morris sought to build a home that would reflect his artistic ideals, not delegating design to an academic architect. In 1859, he collaborated with architect Philip Webb to design the Red House, neither medieval nor modern but the opposite of classical: not symmetrical, not unitary, not composed, and not ornamental. Built of humble red brick, it featured steep roofs, broken arches, and a well, appearing as the result of successive construction with overlapping volumes and improvised solutions by pragmatic artisans. The interior—furniture, decoration, and everything—was designed by Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Webb, combining the arts of woodworking, glassmaking, and painting. This represents the concept of a total work of art where all creative disciplines unite in a single project. In 1861, at age 27, Morris founded Morris and Company with friends Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and other Pre-Raphaelite artists. The firm's project was to produce everything possible in decorative art: furniture, marquetry, stained glass, ceramics, tapestries, embroidery, upholstery fabrics, frescoes, ironwork, and jewelry. Morris used the best materials and highest quality possible. Like cathedral builders of old, the artist-workers worked hand-in-hand and were masters of their creation. Men and women were paid equally and with dignity. While artisanal methods were the rule, concessions were made to industrial production methods. The firm's cardinal rule was that machines should work for humans, not vice versa. Within a year, productions were presented at the 1862 International Exhibition, achieving resounding success. The firm's products became popular only among the bourgeoisie who could afford Morris-style interiors, representing the fundamental contradiction of trying to democratize beauty through luxury production. Morris wrote: 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' This philosophy aimed to bring beauty into everyday life, realizing Ruskin's utopian vision. However, the contradiction remained: Morris had contempt for 'luxury for the rich' and wanted to democratize beauty, but his products could only be afforded by the wealthy. Morris was among the first to affirm that consumers must be educated to appreciate the true value of things, to consider purchases as investments rather than disposable products. He wrote that waste is inseparable from a society of inequality, producing artificial poverty in civilization. This waste includes waste of materials, waste of labor, and waste of life itself. In 1888, the Union of Arts and Crafts and Industry chose 'Arts and Crafts' as their name, and this movement flourished throughout England for decades, dying only in World War II.

William Morris emerged from a wealthy Victorian middle-class background, shaped by his parents' ostentatious clutter of expensive, breakable decorations. His childhood at boarding school, surrounded by industrial pollution, drove him to romanticize a mythical medieval past. At Oxford, he joined forces with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ned Burne-Jones of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who rejected Victorian sentimentalism for medieval narratives and meticulous detail. This artistic revolution, combined with Morris's romantic vision of a pre-industrial golden age, laid the foundation for the Arts and Crafts movement's rejection of industrialization and celebration of handcrafted beauty.