John Everett Millais's Ophelia: the melancholy of the Pre-Raphaelite style | Artworks Explained

“Shakespeare was a favourite source for 19th-century artists: and as a young man with a taste for romantic melancholy, John Everett Millais was - not surprisingly - drawn towards the death of Ophelia, described so beautifully in the 4th Act of Hamlet…”
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Considered one of the great masterpieces of the Pre-Raphaelite style, Millais painted an atypical Ophelia for the time. The painting shows Ophelia floating in the water, with great detail in her dress and in the flowers that surround her, each of them with a symbolic charge, such as the ring of violets around her neck, as a symbol of fidelity, but which may also refer to death.
Every tango, leaf, and flower is the product of a rigorous observation of nature. As we observe the figure sinking into the water, we experience the tinge of the melancholy characteristic of Victorian art. Millais is remarkable for his ability to combine Pre-Raphaelite ideals with Victorian sensibility.
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