Elizabeth Siddal: Study for "Ophelia"

John Everett Millais

Date: 1852

Materials: Pencil

Pose in the bath

After returning from a painting trip with Hunt in the winter of 1851, Millais needed a model to finish his painting of Ophelia (a grief stricken lover of Prince Hamlet).

Elizabeth Siddal agreed to pose for him in the bath in his studio, to portray Ophelia's drowning realistically in the true to nature spirit of Pre-Raphaelitism.

Unfortunately, all did not go to plan and Millais found himself to be the one in hot water . . .

Millais's mistake

"In order that the artist might get the proper set of the garments in the water and the right atmosphere and aqueous effects, she had to lie in a large bath filled with water, which was kept at an even temperature by lamps placed beneath. One day, just as the picture was nearly finished, the lamps went out unnoticed by the artist, who was so intensely absorbed in his work that he thought of nothing else, and the poor lady was kept floating in the cold water until she was quite benumbed. She herself never complained of this, but the result was that she contracted a severe cold, and her father wrote to Millais, threatening him with an action for £50 damages for his carelessness." 

Never posed again

She never sat for Millais again.

In a letter to his patron, Thomas Combe, he wrote:

"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' ".

After some final touches, the picture was submitted to the Royal Academy in April 1852 and received a favourable press:

"only that face of poor drowning Ophelia. My eye goes to that, and rests on that, and sees nothing else." 

('Punch' magazine) 

Ophelia in 'Hamlet' 

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 lauds, as on 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.

Hamlet (Act IV, Scene VII)