preraphaelist: hidden details in millais’ ophelia:  a robin perched on a branch in the up

preraphaelist:

hidden details in millais’ ophelia: 

• a robin perched on a branch in the upper right hand corner.
• a mist of cobweb above the sitter’s feet ominously remminiscent of a skull.
• dead reeds rotting in the water. the backdrop was in 1851 from june until november, in ewell, surrey.
• a garland of violets around the neck of ophelia, modelled by elizabeth siddal.

painting the backdrop for ophelia was a rather disastrous affair, as it was frequently too wet to work. millais painted for eleven hours a day when he was able; he wrote of the affair to a friend that he sat “…under an umbrella throwing a shadow scarcely larger than a halfpenny…“, was threatened by the local village magistrate for ‘destroying’ a hayfield, threatened again by a bull romping through said hayfield, and was”…also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water, and becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that lady sank to muddy death… There are two swans who not a little add to my misery by persisting in watching me from the exact spot I wish to paint, occasionally destroying every water-weed within their reach. Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.”