This painting is one of the most well-known Hamlet depictions in art. It portrays Ophelia drowning herself in the stream in the play Hamlet. John Everett Millais painted this in 1851 and 1852 in two separate locations. His model, Elizabeth Siddall, posed for the painting in his bathtub and actually became ill as a result. The painting depicts the scene in which Queen Gertrude describes how Ophelia, driven mad with grief over her father’s death, fell into a river while picking flowers and drowned. Almost all of the flowers in the painting have a meaning within the play, such as the nettles growing around the willow representing pain and the willow itself representing foresaken love.
