Ophelia, the tragic young beauty of Hamlet, has been painted many times in art, with the Pre-Raphaelites finding her particularly fascinating and John Everett Millais using Elizabeth Siddal as the model for his circa 1851 portrait. This required Lizzie to spend a great deal of time in a tub of water while posing for Millais and eventually caused her to catch a bad cold. Beyond that, Lizzie’s Ophelia costume was a second-hander, described by Millais in a letter as being "a really splendid lady's ancient dress--all flowered over in silver embroidery…You may imagine it is something rather good when I tell you it cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds."Odilon Redon did some ethereal and haunting portraits of Ophelia, and two I haven’t seen as often as those of Waterhouse and Millais are late 19th century works by Scottish artist Frances MacDonald MacNair and French artist Paul Steck (pictured). Click here too for an article detailing more info about the plants and flowers in Ophelia’s famed garland and her “fair and unpolluted flesh.”
