A woman spent hours lying fully clothed in a bathtub of cold water until she nearly died – all to create what would become one of the most haunting paintings in history. The model caught pneumonia, the artist was obsessed with every leaf and flower, and 170 years later, we’re still captivated by the mysterious death of Ophelia. Here’s why this disturbing masterpiece refuses to release its grip on our imagination.
Elizabeth Siddal, the model, floated in that freezing bathtub for five months of sessions while artist John Everett Millais captured every detail. The oil lamps meant to warm the water went out without anyone noticing. She never complained, dedicated to her art even as her health failed. This extraordinary commitment produced one of the most meticulously detailed paintings ever created – a vision of death that somehow feels more alive than most portraits of the living.
Look at how Ophelia’s face seems caught between terror and ecstasy, her hands open in a gesture that’s either surrender or welcome. Her dress, heavy with water, pulls her down while flowers float around her like colorful witnesses to her fate. This isn’t just Shakespeare’s character dying – this is Victorian England’s complex relationship with death, female madness, and forbidden desire captured in a single, perfect moment.
It’s Oleg G. from Art Explained Simply & Quickly, and today we’re diving into the haunting world of John Everett Millais’ ‘Ophelia’ – a painting that combines extraordinary beauty with profound darkness.
Completed in 1852, this masterpiece depicts a scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia, driven mad by Hamlet’s rejection and her father’s death, falls into a stream while gathering flowers and, rather than saving herself, sings as she drowns. It’s a scene Shakespeare doesn’t show directly but describes through another character’s account – making Millais’ decision to visualize this unseen moment particularly significant.
The painting’s creation story is almost as famous as the artwork itself. Millais, just 22 years old and part of the rebellious Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, began by painting the background outdoors over five months during 1851. He sat in a small hut by the Hogsmill River in Surrey, capturing every leaf, flower, and ripple with extraordinary precision. This wasn’t casual plein-air painting – it was obsessive documentation of nature, with Millais working up to eleven hours daily in his determination to record every detail.
Only after completing this meticulously rendered background did he add the figure of Ophelia, painted in his London studio. This is where Elizabeth Siddal enters the story. At just 19, she was already a favorite model of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who would later marry her. For Millais, she embodied the perfect Ophelia – pale, red-haired, with a haunting, ethereal quality that suited the character’s tragic fate.
The bathtub sessions were as grueling as they were dangerous. To capture the effect of a dress floating in water, Siddal lay in a bathtub wearing an antique gown purchased by Millais for the purpose. The water was initially heated with oil lamps placed beneath the tub, but during one session, the lamps went out unnoticed. Rather than complain, Siddal continued posing in the increasingly cold water. Her dedication came at a terrible price – she developed a severe cold that developed into pneumonia. Her father later threatened to sue Millais for medical expenses, and though they settled the matter, Siddal’s health was permanently compromised.
Let’s look closely at the painting itself. Ophelia lies in the stream, her face above water, surrounded by an explosion of botanical detail. Her expression is ambiguous – part terror, part ecstasy, part resignation. Her mouth is slightly open, perhaps in her dying song. Her hands are raised in a gesture that could be welcoming death or making a final, futile attempt to rise. Her dress, heavily embroidered with silver flowers, billows around her body while weighing her down.
The technical achievement is extraordinary. The water surfaces reflect the sky while simultaneously allowing us to see beneath to the dark stream bed. Ophelia’s dress captures both the heaviness of sodden fabric and the ethereal quality of material spreading through water. Her pale face and hands contrast dramatically with the riot of vegetation surrounding her, creating a visual focal point amidst the complex natural details.
The flowers in the painting deserve special attention. Each one is rendered with scientific accuracy and loaded with symbolic meaning. Millais included red poppies representing sleep and death; forget-me-nots for remembrance; pansies for love in vain; daisies for innocence; and violets for faithfulness, modesty, and early death. Shakespeare mentions some of these in Hamlet, but Millais expanded the botanical symbolism, creating a visual language that his Victorian audience would have read clearly.
One of the most fascinating aspects of ‘Ophelia’ is its relationship to Victorian attitudes toward death. The 19th century had a complex, almost obsessive relationship with mortality. Post-mortem photography, elaborate mourning rituals, and romanticized depictions of death were commonplace. In this context, Ophelia’s death becomes not just tragic but beautiful – a “beautiful death” that fascinated Victorian sensibilities. She doesn’t struggle against fate but seems to welcome it, surrounded by natural beauty as she transitions from life.
The painting’s treatment of female madness is equally revealing. Victorian culture was deeply uncomfortable with female emotional and mental distress, often diagnosing women with “hysteria” and other gendered conditions. Ophelia embodies this unease – a woman whose emotions have overwhelmed her reason, leading to self-destruction. Yet Millais presents her not as grotesque but as sublime – her madness becomes a kind of transcendence, challenging simplistic Victorian narratives about female mental health.
The Pre-Raphaelite context adds another layer of meaning. This brotherhood of artists rebelled against academic conventions, seeking to return to the detailed, colorful style of late medieval and early Renaissance art before Raphael. Their manifesto emphasized truth to nature, detailed observation, and intense colors. ‘Ophelia’ exemplifies these principles – every element observed directly from nature, painted with unprecedented detail and vibrant color. But it also shows how the Pre-Raphaelites romanticized women, often depicting them as beautiful victims or tragic muses.
Elizabeth Siddal’s own story makes the painting even more poignant. After her experience with Millais, she continued modeling for the Pre-Raphaelites while developing her own artistic career – unusual for a woman of her working-class background. She married Rossetti but suffered from ill health and addiction to laudanum. After the stillbirth of their daughter, her mental health deteriorated, and she died of an overdose in 1862, just ten years after posing for ‘Ophelia.’ Rossetti, in a dramatic gesture, buried his unpublished poems with her, only to have her exhumed years later to retrieve them – a macabre coda to her life as art’s tragic muse.
The painting’s composition reveals Millais’ genius. Ophelia is positioned slightly off-center, creating a subtle tension. The horizontal format emphasizes her floating position, while the dense vegetation creates a frame around her pale figure. The water serves as both setting and metaphor – literally the agent of her death while symbolizing the emotional depths that have overwhelmed her.
‘Ophelia’ has had an extraordinary cultural afterlife. Since its creation, it has inspired countless adaptations, references, and homages. Contemporary photographers like Gregory Crewdson have created modern versions. Fashion designers regularly reference its aesthetic. Musicians from Nick Cave to Natalie Merchant have been inspired by its imagery. It appears in films, novels, and even video games. Few paintings have so thoroughly penetrated popular culture while maintaining their artistic integrity.
What makes this enduring influence particularly fascinating is how the painting speaks to contemporary concerns. Its exploration of female mental health, ecological detail, and the relationship between beauty and death feels strikingly modern. While created in a specific Victorian context, ‘Ophelia’ transcends its time to address universal human experiences of loss, fragility, and the thin boundary between life and death.
The painting’s current home at the Tate Britain in London doesn’t diminish its power to captivate. Visitors routinely stand transfixed before it, often spending more time with this single work than with entire galleries of other paintings. Its visual richness rewards extended viewing – the longer you look, the more details emerge, from tiny insects in the vegetation to subtle color variations in the water.
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What aspect of ‘Ophelia’ strikes you most powerfully? The technical achievement, the tragic story behind it, or its psychological depth? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Your perspective might help others see new dimensions in this haunting masterpiece.
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