“With the present work Waterhouse demonstrates the breadth of his skill as Miranda braces herself against the rising storm, her thick, auburn hair and the weighty folds of her fabric gripped by the winds. The pale hand held to her breast seemingly visualizes the moment when Miranda cries “Against my very heart. Poor souls, they…
Category: Shakespeare
Odilon Redon: L’enfant prédestinée, Ophélie
There is a willow grows askant the brookThat shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.Therewith fantastic garlands did she makeOf cornflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,But our cold maids do “dead men fingers” call them.There on the pendant boughs her coronet weedsClamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,When…
Cecilia Bartoli: La mort d’Ophélie (Berlioz)
“La mort d’Ophélie (The death of Ophelia) is “a setting of a ballad by Ernest Legouvé, based on Gertrude’s description of Ophelia’s drowning in Act IV of Hamlet. It was originally composed for solo voice and piano in 1842, but in 1848 Berlioz revised it for female choir and orchestra. The verses of Ernest Legouvé…
John William Waterhouse: Juliet
“Here we see a lovely girl wearing a richly-coloured gown that closely resembles Mariana’s in its cut. Endowed with unusually curly hair (for Waterhouse), Juliet grasps her luxurious blue necklace nervously. She is presented in the full profile perfected by Italian Renaissance artists; for most of the 15th Century, privileged maidens ready to be married…
Odilon Redon: Ophelia Among the Flowers
“The painting illustrates a particular moment in the play, in which Ophelia finds her way to the brook, where she meets her end amongst the flowers that she has gathered. This moment, though frequently figured as a descent into madness, can also be interpreted as an escape from the patriarchal dominance that has moulded her…
The Real Ophelia
The scene depicted is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act IV, Scene vii, in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weedsClambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;When down her weedy trophies and herselfFell in…
Thomas Francis Dicksee: Jessica (1867)
Farewell, and if my fortune be not crossed, I have a father, you a daughter, lost. — Jessica, The Merchant of Venice Who Is Jessica? This painting shows Jessica, a character in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, the daughter of a Jewish moneylender Shylock, who defies her father’s wishes and falls in love with…
John Everett Millais: ‘Mariana’ (1851)
Who is John Everett Millais? John Millais (1829–1896) was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English artists who united in 1848 hoping to renew British painting. They idealized the sincerity of purpose and clarity of form of the early Italian Renaissance artists—before Raphael—finding art that they sought to emulate. The Pre-Raphaelite…
Edmund Dulac: Abysm of Time from ‘The Tempest’
EDMUND DULAC, Abysm of time, Illustration of The Tempest Prospero. ‘What sees thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?’ Via olosta
At Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet 