A Closer Look at OPHELIA - DAN SCOTT - Draw Paint ...
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a Closer Look at
OPHELIA
by John Everett Millais
DAN SCOTT
Ophelia
In this ebook, I take a closer look at the remarkably intricate Ophelia by British artist
and founding member of the Pre-Raphaelites, Sir John Everett Millais.
John Everett Millais, Ophelia, c.1851
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Key Facts, Ideas, and Subject
Here are some of the key facts about Ophelia:
• The figure in the painting is Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act
IV, Scene VII. She is depicted lying in the stream singing, just before she drowns.
Below is an extract from the play which poetically describes her death:
“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
• In plain words, she climbed a willow tree to gather exotic flowers. The branch
broke and she fell into the “weeping brook” (small river). Her garments “spread
wide and mermaid-like” kept her afloat at first from the air trapped underneath.
But, she was eventually pulled down by her garments, “heavy with their drink... to
her muddy death”.
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• The painting was first exhibited in 1852 at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. It
received a mixed reception, with many critics praising his technique, yet question-
ing the subject matter. One critic wrote in The Times, “there must be something
strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and
robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty”.
• It was painted in two separate stages: first for the landscape and second for Oph-
elia. Millais and the Pre-Raphaelites placed considerable importance on the land-
scape, which explains the remarkably intricate detail used for the background area
in this painting.
• He started painting the landscape part in July 1851. Instead of painting from the
comforts of his studio, he immersed himself in nature and painted on location. But
this did not go without its challenges, as he wrote:
“The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity
for probing human flesh. I am threatened with a notice to appear before a
magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay ... and am also in
danger of being blown by the wind into the water. Certainly the painting of a
picture under such circumstances would be greater
punishment to a murderer than hanging.”
• He reportedly painted the landscape for up to 11 hours a day, six days a week, over
five months in 1851.
• Due to poor weather conditions, Millais ended up having a small hut created later
that year which was “made of four hurdles, like a sentry-box, covered outside with
straw”. Fellow Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt, was impressed by the hut
and had a similar one built for himself.
• Ophelia was modeled by Elizabeth Siddal, who was 19 years old at the time. Millais
dressed her in a silver embroidered dress which he purchased from an antique
shop for four pounds. He wrote to Thomas Combe in March 1852 about the dress,
“Today I have purchased a really splendid lady’s ancient dress - all flowered over
in silver embroidery - and I am going to paint it for “Ophelia”. You may imagine
it is something rather good when I tell you it cost me, old and dirty as it is, four
pounds”.
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• Below is a self-portrait by Siddal completed after she modeled as Ophelia:
Elizabeth Siddal, Self-Portrait, 1854
• Millais had Siddal lay in a bathtub filled with water at his studio in London as he
completed the second part of the painting over four months. Below is one of his
studies of her face:
John Everett Millais, Ophelia Sketch, c.1851
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• Millais originally included a small water rat in the painting, but it was met with
confusion: “Hunt’s uncle and aunt came, both of whom understood most gratify-
ingly every object except my water rat. The male relation, when invited to guess at
it, eagerly pronounced it to be a hare. Perceiving by our smiles that he had made a
mistake, a rabbit was then hazarded. After which I have a faint recollection of a dog
or a cat being mentioned.” Millais ended up painting over the water rat.
• The painting influenced many artists, such as Salvador Dalí, who wrote in 1936,
“How could Salvador Dalí fail to be dazzled by the flagrant surrealism of English
Pre-Raphaelitism? The Pre-Raphaelite painters bring us radiant women who are,
at the same time, the most desirable and most frightening that exist.” He also cre-
ated his own rendition of Ophelia, shown here.
• The painting is currently held at Tate Britain for those who wish to see the intricate
detail in person.
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Intricate Detail
The first thing which comes to mind when I see this painting is the remarkably in-
tricate detail. The whole painting is carefully rendered, even the trees, flowers, and
plants in the background.
Below are some close-ups to give you a better idea of the virtuosity of this work. In
the first image of Ophelia, notice the subtle white outline surrounding her hand, in-
dicating the presence of water. Small touches like this can go a long way in depicting
realism.
In the leaves, notice how they are carefully rendered in light, but get gradually more
vague as they recede into shadow. This creates a strong sense of depth.
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The area below is particularly sophisticated, with a branch and leaves shooting out
into the sunlight, creating an interesting contrast between light and shadow; or deli-
cate and vague.
The plants below would have been challeng-
ing to paint, with the awkward shapes and
complex shadow arrangements.
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Color and Light
The painting features rich colors of nature against the soft, skin tones of Ophelia.
The saturated greens give a feel of the luscious, unkempt nature.
In terms of color temperature, the lights appear slightly warm compared to the
darks. This is particularly evident in the greens: notice how the greens in shadow
are much closer to blue than the greens in light.
Throughout the dense landscape are small bursts of light and color to depict the
exotic flowers. As mentioned earlier in the post, Ophelia was collecting these exotic
flowers before she fell into the stream.
The colors used for Ophelia are soft and weak. She appears relatively fragile as she
lay in the stream, before her “muddy death”. Light colors are used for the subject’s
face and hands, drawing your attention towards this area. You can see how much
lighter the subject’s face is compared to the surrounding landscape in the grayscale
image below:
9Composition
• The composition is rather simple if you look past all the intricate detail. It boils
down to Ophelia laying in the river, surrounded by nature.
• Ophelia’s face is partially framed by nature, with the top of the frame being the
brown tree trunk and branches, the left of the frame being the plants shooting
up from the stream, and the bottom of the frame being the green edge of the
shore.
• In the photo below, I have segmented the painting into thirds both horizontally
and vertically. Notice how Ophelia is positioned almost directly along that lower
horizontal line and how her torso is positioned around the bottom-left intersec-
tion. These are considered to be aesthetically pleasing areas in a painting.
• Finally, you may have noticed the unusual shape of the painting, with the top
corners being curved. Though I was unable to find any information on why Mil-
lais opted for this shape.
10Key Takeaways
Here are some of the key takeaways from Ophelia which you could
incorporate into your own paintings:
• Intricate paintings like this are not created overnight; they take weeks,
months, or sometimes even years to create.
• Traditionally in portrait painting, the background is pushed back and simpli-
fied. But there are no rules against painting the background with just as much
detail as the main figure, like Millais did in Ophelia. Just make sure there is
something to differentiate the figure from the background. In this case, Mil-
lais used contrast in value: the figure’s face and hands are much lighter than
the surrounding nature.
• Painting from life allows you to see with all the subtle nuances which can get
lost in a photo. The remarkable intricacy of Ophelia suggests it was painted
in a controlled studio environment, but Millais preferred to paint on location.
• If you segment the composition into thirds both ways, the intersecting lines
are considered to be aesthetically pleasing areas to position your focal points.
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