Decorative Notebooks for People who Love Art
MULTIPURPOSE: Blank journal notebook for sketching, jotting down thoughts, doodling, and taking notes
COVER DESIGN: A bold and beautiful reproduction of "Ophelia" by John Everett Millais (1852)
QUALITY: Non-glossy cover, so fingerprints and light glare won't be a problem. Premium quality paper provides an enjoyable writing experience.
SIZE: 6 x 9 inches - 100 pages - Easy to Carry
About the Cover:
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 weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
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 tunes,
As one 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.
Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic-romantic figure of Ophelia from Hamlet was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in Royal Academy exhibitions. Arthur Hughes exhibited his version of her death scene in the same year as this picture was shown (Manchester City Art Gallery).
Millais began the background in July 1851, at Ewell, Surrey. In accordance with the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he painted with close observation of nature.
This painting depicts the death of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Overwhelmed by grief when Hamlet murders her father, Polonius, she falls into a stream and drowns. The flowers she holds are symbolic: the poppy signifies death, daisies innocence and pansies thoughts. When it was painted, Ophelia was regarded as one of the most accurate and elaborate studies of nature ever made. Millais painted the background from life by the Hogsmill River in Surrey. Artist, poet and model Elizabeth Siddall posed for Ophelia in a bath of water kept warm by lamps underneath.
