Along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais created the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English artists, poets, and art critics, in 1848.
She is a young aristocratic woman, the daughter of Polonius, who goes insane as a result of her lover Hamlet’s deeds and subsequently drowns in a river.
Millais used rich, strong colors in the countryside to contrast the pale Ophelia with the environment behind her. All of this can be observed in the shrubbery and trees around Ophelia.
Her hair floats in the water around her face, emphasizing her lost youth, and her hands are subserviently raised palm up, barely protruding out of the water’s surface. The overall effect is of fatigued defeat.
Millais created the Ophelia drowning painting in two stages: the first stage was creating the background landscape and the second stage was creating Ophelia herself.
Ophelia received very mixed reviews when it was originally publicly displayed at London’s Royal Academy in 1852. The Pre-Raphaelites’ representations of their models horrified Victorian sensibilities.