Tate | Work In Focus: Millais's Ophelia

The Model

Millais's model was a young woman aged 19 years called Elizabeth Siddall. She was discovered by his friend, Walter Deverell, working with a needle in a milliner's, and would later become the wife of one of Millais's friends, Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1860. This was the only time Elizabeth posed for Millais. She was described as "tall and slender, with red, coppery hair and bright consumptive complexion." Millais's Ophelia was "wonderfully like her." (Arthur Hughes, 'The Letters of DG Rossetti to William Allingham', quoted in The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, John Guille Millais, vol. 1, 1899, p.144).

Read more about Elizabeth Siddall.

Detail of Ophelia
© Tate, London 2003

To create the effect of Elizabeth pretending to be Ophelia drowning in the river, she posed for Millais in a bath full of water. To keep the water warm some oil lamps were placed underneath. On one occasion, the lamps went out and Millais was so engrossed by his painting that he didn't even notice!

Elizabeth got very cold and became quite ill. In those days there was no National Health Service or readily available medicine, so Elizabeth was looked after by a private doctor. Elizabeth's father (an auctioneer in Oxford) was furious that his precious daughter had become ill and ordered Millais to pay the 50 medical bills (£3,173.05 today). The matter was settled and Miss Siddall recovered quickly.

Detail of Ophelia's dress
© Tate, London 2003

Elizabeth wore a very fine silver embroidered dress bought by Millais from a second-hand shop for four pounds (this would be about £250 today). In March, 1852, Millais wrote to Mrs Combe "To-day I have purchased a really splendid lady's ancient dress- all flowered over in silver embroidery-and I am going to paint it for 'Ophelia'. You may imagine it is something rather good when I tell you it cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds." (The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, John Guille Millais, vol. 1, 1899, p.162).

By March 6, Millais wrote "I am getting on slowly, but I hope surely, Ophelia's head is finished." The Huguenot, the other painting Millais was working on at the same time and hoping to exhibit at the RA with Ophelia, was "very nearly complete" apart from the figure of the girl for which he was awaiting a model.

By March 31, Millais had only to "paint the skirt of Ophelia's dress, which will not, I think, take me more than Saturday." Millais was hopeful that his pictures would be placed in good positions in the exhibition as the principal hanger for the Royal Academy Exhibition, Mr CR Leslie, had called twice to see Millais's work "each time expressing great admiration." (The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, John Guille Millais, vol. 1, 1899, p.162-3).

Both artists wanted to exhibit their paintings at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1852. The deadline for submitting a painting was 1 April. 'Ophelia,' 'The Hireling Shepherd' and 'A Huguenot' all appeared in the 1852 exhibition. The 'Light of the World' by Hunt was exhibited in 1854.

Elizabeth Siddall

Elizabeth Siddall was much admired by the Pre-Raphaelites and was also painted by Walter Deverell in Twelfth Night, 1849-50, (see sketch in the Tate Collection below) by Hunt in A Converted British Family (1849-50) and Valentine (1851-2), and then only by Rossetti from 1852.

Study for `Twelfth Night', Walter Howell Deverell, circa 1850
© Tate, London 2003.

This was Elizabeth Siddall's first appearance in a pre-Raphaelite painting, as Viola in disguise on the left of the picture.

She was Rossetti's muse, inspiring his artistic production. He painted her as an enigmatic woman who never looks straight at the spectator unlike the directness of her own self-portrait. They married in 1860, but; "The marriage turned into a catastrophe. Siddall's melancholia and illness prevailed.She was anxious, restless, in part because of Rossetti's infidelities, heavily addicted to laudanum, to release her from the pain of both disease and distress." (Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic by Elisabeth Bronfen, 1992, p.176)

In 1862 she died from an overdose of laudanum; "perhaps accidental or perhaps a suicide; in either case the overdose may have been related to post-natal depression after the birth of her stillborn child the previous year." (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites by Elizabeth Prettejohn, Tate, London, 2000, page 74).

Rossetti's Beata Beatrix was a homage to the memory of his wife and illustrated Dante's Vita Nuova (1290-4, 31 poems), recording Dante's unrequited love for Beatrice Portinari and his mourning after her premature death. Rossetti stated that the painting must be seen not as a representation of the death of Beatrice, but as an ideal of the subject. He was "possessed by the notion of a dead beloved while his chosen muse was still alive, indeed before he had met her. It seems as if Elizabeth Siddall had to die so that she could fulfil the role he had designed for her in his imagination." (G Hough in Bronfen, 1992, p171).

Rossetti's sister, Christine wrote:

"He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream."