Ophelia in Art

Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)

Ophelia is a character from Hamlet. It is said that you can remove her from the play and it works just fine. Hamlet in a sense is a study of madness.

Both Ophelia and Hamlet lost their fathers. Hamlet started to hallucinate ghosts that told him to kill. He went on a murder spree. Ophelia reacted by singing and gifting flowers. In a sense, she suffered a childhood regression.

She dies by falling from a branch and landing in a river. With her cumbersome dress she drowns or she freezes to death. It depends on the story. On her funeral, Halmet claims that he loved her the most.

However, in all their past interactions he was super mean to her. Feminists like Ophelia. She is a symbol of a woman who acts outside the social norms and is treated like a crazy. John Everet Millais made Ophelia super famous in the 1850s.

His intention was to beautify the act of dying. He painted the flowers from life. His model posed in a bathtub to get the water look just right. She suffered a serious illness from laying in cold water for so long.

She almost went the way of Ophelia. From that point on, everyone who painted had to have their own version of Ophelia. Both men and women artist got into this Ophelia craze. They made plays, poems and sculptures.

There were even plays were Ophelia outlived Hamlet. Above, you can see one Ophelia painting made by various painters. I hope you find them amusing. There is a video of this topic in my Artsy Sister Youtube channel. Please give a like and subscribe.