Ophelia by John Everet Millais (1851-2)
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op. 18 is indubitably
moving. But is it great art? The strains of it accompany the ill-fated lovers in
David Lean’s l945 film adaptation of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, a powerfully moving work of
emotion in its own right. The Pre-Raphaelite show at the National
Gallery, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design 1848-1900 begs the same question. One of the most famous works
of Pre-Raphaelite art, the painting of the drowning Ophelia by John Everet
Millais, is a centerpiece of the exhibit. As you walk into the gallery in which
it’s displayed, it hits you right between the eyes. You are struck by the
apparition of sepulchered beauty. Millais in fact has gone where Shakespeare
feared to tread, showing what in Shakespeare was only spoken by Queen Gertrude (Act IV, Scene VII) and ambiguously
at that. Did Ophelia kill herself or was the drowning accidental? It’s a
question Shakespeare scholars have troubled over for centuries and which Millais doesn’t answer
in the painting. But what is the difference between
romanticism and estheticization? The Pre-Raphaelite movement which came into
existence during the height of the Industrial Revolution was known for the
propagation of the esthetic as a counterpoint to material values. Yet this
romanticized Ophelia in all her sublime glory embellishes the bard’s words in
way that ultimately lessens their imaginative effect.
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Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Washington Journal II: Millais’ Ophelia
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