Ophelia

The heroine Ophelia was popular with 19th century artists. Rae shows the moment in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' (Act 4, Scene 5) when Ophelia, mad with grief, symbolically recites the names of and scatters rue (a bitter herb), rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbine, daisies and violets.

'There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.'

This romantic, theatrical image was, according to her husband Ernest Normand, painted under the influence of the couple's neighbour, the artist Frederic Leighton (1830 - 1896).

It is interesting to note the composition of this painting, split almost perfectly in half, between light and dark. This perhaps symbolises the rent in Ophelia's mind caused by her grief.