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History: how it was made
Millais began work on Ophelia in the summer of 1851, spending approximately five months painting the riverbank setting outdoors at Ewell, Surrey, beside the River Hogsmill. He worked in conditions that were far from comfortable, enduring cold temperatures, insects, and the relentless scrutiny demanded by his own commitment to botanical accuracy. Every plant visible in the finished canvas, including the willow, the nettle, the daisy, the pansy, and the forget-me-not, was recorded directly from observation, giving the scene a density of natural detail that no studio composition could have achieved. The young model for Ophelia was Elizabeth Siddal, who posed for the figure separately, lying fully clothed in a bathtub filled with water that was kept warm by oil lamps placed beneath it. According to accounts from those close to the project, the lamps went out on at least one occasion and Siddal remained in the cold water without complaint, subsequently developing a serious illness. The commission was not issued by a patron in the conventional sense. Millais exhibited the work at the Royal Academy in 1852, where it attracted fierce debate. Some critics found the literalism of the natural setting inappropriate to the tragic dignity of a Shakespearean subject. Others, led by John Ruskin, celebrated the painting as a triumph of close observation and poetic feeling working in unity. The work was purchased by the collector Henry Farrer and eventually passed through several collections before entering the permanent holdings of the Tate Gallery, where it has remained one of the most visited paintings in the British national collection.
What makes this painting extraordinary
The composition of Ophelia is organized along a horizontal axis that emphasizes the figure as both part of and separate from the natural world surrounding her. The young woman floats on the surface of the water, her arms extended and her gaze directed upward, occupying a narrow zone between the dense foliage of the bank and the reflective surface below. Millais places her neither fully submerged nor clearly above the water, creating a visual ambiguity that mirrors the threshold between life and death. The perspective is close and level, as if the viewer stands at the water edge, which draws the eye into the scene with unusual intimacy. The surface of the painting is remarkable for the evenness of its attention. No single flower or leaf is painted with less care than any other, and the entire canvas rewards prolonged examination. The wet-white technique used by Millais contributes a quality of inner illumination to the colors, so that the greens of the weeds, the pink of the robe, and the pale flesh of the hands each seem to generate their own light. The figure of Ophelia is rendered with unflinching naturalism. The face of Elizabeth Siddal carries the slightly unfocused look of someone slipping away rather than the composed beauty of a conventional heroine. Her mouth is open, and her fingers splay in a gesture that reads simultaneously as surrender and supplication. The tension between the painting as an image of beauty and the painting as an image of death is sustained by this precision of observation, which refuses to allow either reading to overwhelm the other. If you wish to own this as a hand-painted oil reproduction, it is available through ByMuseum with free worldwide shipping.
Hand-painted oil on canvas
Own John Everett Millais’s Ophelia as a genuine painting
Painted by hand using oil on canvas. The brushwork and texture are real, not simulated by ink.
Oil on canvas, same materials as the original
Painted by hand, not printed
Multiple sizes available
What does Ophelia mean?
Ophelia draws its subject from Act IV of Hamlet, in which the character of Ophelia, maddened by grief after the death of her father Polonius, falls into a brook and drowns while gathering flowers. The flowers she carries and those surrounding her in the painting are not incidental decoration. Each carries a traditional symbolic meaning that would have been legible to a Victorian audience educated in the language of flowers. The pansy represents unrequited love, the daisy stands for innocence, the forget-me-not speaks to true love and remembrance, and the willow is associated in English tradition with mourning and forsaken love. The poppy, visible near her right hand, is a symbol of sleep and death. Millais constructed the floral environment with this symbolic grammar in mind, so that the natural setting becomes a kind of text, narrating the emotional meaning of the scene even for a viewer unfamiliar with the Shakespearean source. Beyond its literary references, the painting carries a broader cultural significance as a meditation on the condition of women in the nineteenth century. Ophelia has no agency in her own story. She is swept along by events set in motion by the men around her, and her death is depicted not as a violent rupture but as a gentle dissolution into nature, which some scholars have read as an indictment of a society that offered women no meaningful resistance to the forces acting upon them. The painting has exerted an extraordinary influence on subsequent culture, inspiring photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists across more than a century and a half. To place a hand-painted oil reproduction of Ophelia in your home is to engage with one of the most symbolically layered images in the entire tradition of British painting.