This piece is called Ophelia by John Everett Millais. It depicts a scene in the Shakespeare Play Hamlet where a grief stricken Ophelia accidentally falls into a stream and drowns. It’s a tragic story. But perhaps equally as haunting is the story of the model for this painting, Elizabeth Siddal who nearly died posing for it.
After months of painting the flora and fauna, Millais brought the canvas into his studio to paint the subject, Ophelia. Though by this time, much of the year had slipped away and it was wintertime in London. He had Siddal wear an antique dress and lie in a bathtub filled with water. During their sessions, Millais would place oil lamps beneath the tub to keep the water warm. But during one of the sessions, the lamps burned out and Millias was too engrossed in his painting to notice. The water turned frigid but Siddal worked through the discomfort in silence. Afterwards, Elizabeth got extremely sick with pneumonia. It was so severe that her parents threatened to take legal action against the artist and forced him to pay for her doctors bills along with her laudanum prescription.
John Everrett Millias was one of the founders of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was made up of artists who were unhappy with the teaching they had received at the art academy. They challenged the many rules they were taught.
They wanted to go back to a time before there were so many rules surrounding art. Back to a time when you could just paint things as they were.
Elizabeth Siddal died of an opiate overdose at the age of 32. She overdosed on a drug called laudanum, the same drug she had to take when she got sick from posing for the Ophelia painting. But this is by no means where the many tragedies of her life start, nor where they end. Because maybe the biggest tragedy is that even today, we know her not for her art, or for her poetry, or even for the suffering she endured to bring us this beautiful painting. But instead, we know her as a pretty face, partially submerged in the tub of water that killed her.