Sir John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais
Ophelia
Oil on canvas
30 x 44”
1852

Sir John Everett Millais (June 8 1829 - August 13 1896) was a painter who helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Ophelia was not received well when first exhibited in London. One critic said, "there must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty." Now this is a very famous and admired painting.

Millais' model was the muse Elizabeth Siddal. He had her lie in a bathtub for seven hours (in the middle of Winter) to pose for this painting. When the gas lamps he used to warm the water went out, he did not bother to turn them back on which resulted in Elizabeth catching pneumonia which weakened her for the rest of her life. It is thought that she had other ailments as well. Throughout her short life, she was muse to other Pre-Raphaelites and was also married to Rossetti.