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Layla Vowell

Layla’s Happy Art Analysis Time: Ophelia by John Everett Millais


Ophelia by John Everett Millais (Photo Credit: widowcranky.com)

Ophelia by John Everett Millais is a gorgeous painting. It features deeply colored flowers and shrubbery floating around a partially submerged woman in an expensive looking dress, her face expressionless and her hands raised out of the water. But, one might wonder, what’s the deeper meaning? You might be shocked to discover that the woman, Ophelia, is dead. In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, in trying to hang a garland from a willow tree in the woods, the branch that Ophelia was standing on snapped and she fell into the river to drown. Learning this gives the piece an entirely new feel. It shows that beauty can be found everywhere, even in death.

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