Ophelia's Travels

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Friends and Foes:
Art Journal, 1852

"No. 556. 'Ophelia,' J. E. Millais. This is an interpretation of the Queen's description of the death of Ophelia to Laertes, certainly the least attractive and least practicable subject in the entire play. The artist has allowed himself no license, but has adhered most strictly to the letter of the text. Ophelia was drowned chanting snatches of old tunes and she was "incapable of her own distress." Thus the picture fulfills the conditions of the prescription, but there are yet other conditions naturally inseparable from the situation, which are unfulfilled. The description of the brook is admirable; we are told of its summer stream and its winter flood. Yet what misconception soever may characterise these works, they plainly declare that when this painter shall have got rid of the wild oats of his art, with some other of his vegetable anomalies, his future promises works of an excellence, which no human hand may have yet excelled."

'Exhibition of the Royal Academy. The Eighty-Fourth,' Art Journal, 14, 1 Jun. 1852, pp.165-176.

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