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Ophelia John Everett Millais 1851-1852 Oil on canvas, 76x112 cm Tate Britain, London, UK |
It was a time: Lying on the library lawn in the shade of an oak with a book of 17th century poetry, studying poems like Andrew Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress,” and wondering if the girl on whom I had a crush would walk by. College was a time of falling in love and love not returned, a time of love gained and love lost, a time shot through with the heartbreaks of entering young adulthood. It was a timeless time.
As an English major, the written word played a big part in my life. But there was visual art, too—every dorm room sported wall posters. Popular were two posters: an illustration by Alphonse Mucha for JOB cigarette papers and “Ophelia” by John Everett Millais. The work of both artists depicted women who stirred our longings but were, alas, out of reach. If you've forgotten this feeling, go read John Keats' “La Belle Dame sans Merci.”
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| Alphonse Mucha, JOB poster, c.1890 |
The Czech painter Mucha (1860-1939) had no influence on me as a landscape painter. I'm not even sure he painted landscapes. But his curley-cue, Art Nouveau style did inspire much of the pen-and-ink work I was creating at the time. Millais (1829-1896), on the other hand, did influence my painting. Although we don't think of him as a landscape painter, he used landscape as a backdrop for his figures. This world often represents a golden era, when flowers were everlasting and the sunshine, ever-present. This, of course, is the world of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which Millais was one of the founders. Many of their paintings depict Medieval themes, especially courtly love—appropriate material for this student who, at the time, was reading Chaucer in Middle English.
“Ophelia” depicts the woman who went mad in Shakespeare's play, “Hamlet,” and drowned herself. But let's not get into all that. (When you see the painting, unless you know the backstory, you wouldn't know she was on her way down. To me, she looks more like a woman who has given herself up to passion, with her lips parted in quiet ecstasy.) Instead, let's look at the landscape that embraces Ophelia.
Millais painted mostly from life. “Ophelia” is no different. It was painted in two different locations, the first being by a river in Surrey. Most artists in those days sketched outdoors to gather reference material for studio paintings. The Pre-Raphaelites, however, preferred to work directly from nature, completing paintings on-location. Interestingly, because Millais considered the landscape to be just as important as the figure in “Ophelia,” he painted the landscape first. Because it took him five months to paint the landscape, he captured flowers that bloomed at different times of year. Apparently these were so accurately painted that a botany professor, who couldn't take students into the field, took them instead to view “Ophelia.”
Once Millais was done with the landscape, he moved to his second location—his London studio—to paint in the figure. He posed the 19-year-old model, Elizabeth Siddal, in a bathtub filled with water. Oil lamps were placed beneath the tub to keep the water warm. Unfortunately, the water must not have been kept warm enough, for the model got very sick, and Millais ended up having to pay all her medical bills. Siddal posed often for the Pre-Raphaelites, but died at 32 from an overdose of laudanum.
As for Millais himself, he entered the Royal Academy school at the very young age of 11, a testament to his early genius. Along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood when he was 18. At 23, he completed “Ophelia,” his best-known work today. Millais was friends with art critic John Ruskin, but he fell in love with Ruskin's wife, and after that marriage was annulled in 1854, Millais married her. Millais then more or less abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style and its narrative quality by painting with a broader brush. These paintings were more decorative and similar in style to works of the burgeoning Aesthetic Movement. Ruskin, who had praised Millais' work during his Pre-Raphaelite period, condemned this newer work, calling it a “catastrophe.” (Was this a case of sour grapes?) Later in life, Millais began to paint pure landscapes, especially scenes of Perthshire in Scotland, where he loved to hunt and fish. Many of these paintings use somber color and depict autumn or winter and are painted more loosely than his early works. In 1896, the same year he was elected President of the Royal Academy, he died of throat cancer.
By the way, the Tate Britain has an excellent discussion of “Ophelia” here.
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Flowing to the River John Everett Millais 1871 Oil on canvas, 140x188 cm Tate Britain, London, UK |
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Chill-October John Everett Millais 1870 Oil on canvas, 186x141 cm Private Collection |
