Presentation of john millais ophelia

1. OPHELIA
Sir John Everett Millais
1851-2

2. CONTENT
 Millais.
 The formation of the Cyclographic society.
 The formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
 Elizabeth Siddal
 Painting analysis
 Critic reviews.

3. SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS

4. Sir John Everett Millais
Portrait of Sir John Everett Millais by Charles Robert
Leslie in the national portrait gallery London
 Millais was born in Southampton,
England, in 1829
 Most of his early childhood was spent in
Jersey
 His mother's "forceful personality" was
the most powerful influence on his early
life.
q His mother, Emily Mary Millais had
a keen interest in art and music
promoting the relocating of the family
to London to help develop contacts at
the Royal Academy of Art.
q He later said "I owe everything to
my mother."

5. Sir John Everett Millais
Photograph of Sir John Everett Millais by Unknown,
 He was sent to Sass's Art School, and
won a silver medal at the Society of Arts
at the age of nine.
 His artistic talent won him a place
at the Royal Academy School at the
still unprecedented age of eleven.
The Life and Letters of John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy. 2 vols. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1899., II, 219

6. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru
 He was first exhibited in
the royal academy with
this piece.
q The subject of
this painting is the
capture of the Inca
emperor Atahualpa by
the
Spanish conquistador
Francisco Pizarro in
1532.
 Millais was only 16
when he painted
this piece(1846).

7. CYCLOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

8. The
Study for Lorenzo and Isabella by Millais. 1848. Pen and India ink on paper, Collection of
the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, accession no. 1396.
The Cyclographic society
 In the royal academy school, he met William Holman Hunt and Dante
Gabriel Rossetti with whom he formed the Cyclographic Society in 1848.
 It was active at least between March and September of 1848, just before
the official formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
 Its purpose was for members to help each other by criticising each
other’s work.
 It had a practical purpose rather than a radical or reforming one.

9. Lovers by a Rosebush by Sir John Everett Millais,Pen and ink on
paper. Collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery,
accession no. 1920P12
 All members were expected to contribute drawings and sketches to a portfolio
about once a month, which would then be circulated to the other members for
their comments and criticisms.
 "The members of the C.S. are requested to write their remarks in Ink, concisely
and legibly, avoiding SATIRE or RIDICULE, which ever defeat the true end of
criticism, and are more likely to produce unkindly feeling and dissension"
(Fredeman, P.R.B. Journal, 108-09).
The lasting legacy of the Cyclographic Society was that it "encouraged
imagination over academic skill. It was important in setting its members subjects
derived from literature that invited small-scale compositions where the emphasis
was on individual interpretation. These were key factors in the more ambitious
works just about to be undertaken by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which were
to distance them further from the Royal Academy, its training methods and the
expectations of its annual exhibitions

10. PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD

11. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
John Everett Millais,
Self-portrait by Millais, 1881.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti c. 1871, by George Fredric Watts
William Holman Hunt,
Self-portrait, 1867, Galleria Degli Uffizii.

12. They rejected what they regarded as the mechanistic
approach first adopted by Mannerist artists
who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo.
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a
group of English painters, poets, and
art critics.
 founded in 1848 by William Holman
Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael
Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic
George Stephens and Thomas
Woolner.
 formed a seven-member
"Brotherhood" modelled in part on
the Nazarene movement.
 The group sought a return to the
abundant detail, intense colours and
complex compositions
of Quattrocento Italian art.
Proserpine, 1874, by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, portrayed by Jane Morris.
 They rejected what they regarded
as the mechanistic approach first
adopted by Mannerist artists
who succeeded Raphael and Michelan
gelo.

13.  The Brotherhood believed
the Classical poses and elegant
compositions of Raphael in
particular had been a corrupting
influence on the academic teaching of
art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite".
 The group associated their work
with John Ruskin, an English critic
whose influences were driven by his
religious background. Christian
themes were abundant.
 The group continued to accept the
concepts of history
painting and mimesis, imitation
of nature, as central to the purpose of
art.
 The Pre-Raphaelites defined
themselves as a reform movement,
created a distinct name for their form
of art, and published a periodical, The
Germ, to promote their ideas.
Christ in the House of His Parents, by John Everett Millais, 1850

14. ELIZABETH SIDDAL

15. ELIZABETH SIDDAL
 She was an English artist, poet, and artists' model.
 Siddal was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Millais including his notable
1852 painting Ophelia and especially by her husband, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti.
 In 1849, while working at a millinery in Cranbourne Alley,
London, William Allingham recommended her as a possible
model to his friend Deverell, who was struggling with a large oil
painting based on the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night.

16.  Deverell took his inspiration directly
from life rather than from an idealized
classical figure. In his Twelfth
Night painting, he based Orsino on
himself, Feste on his friend Dante
Gabriel Rossetti and Viola/Cesario on
Siddal.
 This was the first time Siddal sat as a
model.
 Deverell later described Siddal as
"magnificently tall, with a lovely
figure, and a face of the most delicate
and finished modelling".
Walter Deverell, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV, 1850

17. Rossetti's 1852 drawing of Siddal painting
 Siddal married Rossetti in 1860
 By 1851, she had become Rossetti's muse, and he began to paint her to the
exclusion of nearly all others. He also stopped Siddal from modelling for others.
 Perhaps Rossetti's most abundant and personal works were his idealized
pencil sketches of Siddal at home, most of which he entitled simply "Elizabeth
Siddal". In these sketches, he portrayed Siddal as a woman of leisure, class, and
beauty, often situated in comfortable settings.
 It has been estimated that there are thousands of Rossetti's drawings, paintings, and
poems in which Sidall was a subject.

18. PAINTING ANALYSIS

19. The scene depicted is
from Shakespeare's Haml
et, Act IV, Scene vii, in
which Ophelia, driven out
of her mind when her
father is murdered by her
lover Hamlet, falls into a
stream, singing and
drowns
"There, on the pendent
boughs her coronet
Weeds Clambering to
hang, an envious sliver
broke; When down her
weedy trophies and
Herself Fell in the
weeping brook. Her
clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and
indued Unto that element; but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death."

20. This rendition of Ophelia is the
epitome of the PRB style; first,
because of the subject matter,
depicting a woman who has lived a
life awaiting happiness, only to find
her destiny on the verge of death: the
vulnerable woman is a popular
subject among Pre-Raphaelite artists.
Also, Millais utilizes bright, intense
colours in the landscape to make the
pale Ophelia contrast with the nature
behind her. All this is evident in the
vivid attention to detail in the brush
and trees around Ophelia, the
contouring of her face, and the
intricate work Millais did on her
dress.

21. DESCRIPTION

22. The flowers shown floating on the
river were chosen to correspond with
Shakespeare's description of
Ophelia's garland. They also reflect
the Victorian interest in the "language
of flowers", according to which each
flower carries a symbolic meaning.
The prominent red poppy—not
mentioned by Shakespeare's
description of the scene—represents
sleep and death.

23. In keeping with the tenets of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
Millais used bright colours, gave
high attention to detail and
faithful truth to nature.

24. PRODUCTION

25. Millais produced Ophelia in two
separate stages: He first painted
the landscape, and secondly the
figure of Ophelia. Having found
a suitable setting for the picture,
Millais remained on the banks of
the Hogsmill River in Ewell for
up to 11 hours a day, six days a
week, over a five-month period
in 1851.

26.  For Millais's Ophelia, Siddal floated in a
bathtub full of water to portray the drowning
Ophelia.
 Millais painted daily through the
winter, putting oil lamps under the tub to
warm the water.
 On one occasion, the lamps went out and the
water became icy cold. Millais, absorbed by
his painting, did not notice and Siddal did not
complain.

27.  she became ill with a
severe cold or pneumonia.
 Her father held Millais responsible and,
under the threat of legal action, Millais
paid her doctor's bills.

28. PAINTING REACTION

29. Mr Millais’s talent is budding into undoubted genius. We
have no hesitation in saying that he had produced the two
most imaginative and powerful pictures in the
exhibition. Ophelia is startling in its originality. The beholder
recoils in amazement at the extraordinary treatment, but a
second glance captivates and a few moments’ contemplation
fascinates him.
The Morning Chronicle, 1852

30. Today, his drowning Ophelia (1852) is the most popular work in the Tate
Gallery. Earlier this year a visitor from Australia, arriving at Millbank, burst
into tears to find Ophelia away on tour in Japan. Its fame derives, of course,
from the story of its model, the Pre-Raphaelite mascot Elizabeth Siddal, who
lay wearing an antique brocade gown in a tin bath-tub to simulate Ophelia’s
last moments. The bath water grew colder and colder and – so the tale goes –
Lizzie contracted pneumonia, aptly foreshadowing her own untimely death as
well as that of Shakespeare’s heroine.
‘Plenty to leave out’,
by Jan Marsh, Literary Review, June 1998

31. 1. Ophelia, 1851-2. Sir John Everett Millais, Bt 1829-1896. Tate / Tate Images
2. ‘Ophelia‘, Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, 1851–2
3. Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt - National Portrait Gallery
4. Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru | Millais, John Everett (Sir) | V&A Explore The Collections
5. Walter Deverell, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV, 1850
6. Rossetti's 1852 drawing of Siddal painting
7. Sveriges konst- och designmuseum.
8. Proserpine, 1874, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, portrayed by Jane Morris

32. OPHELIA
Sir John Everett Millais
1851-2