Ophelia (Final Study)
John William Waterhouse, 1910
For now, just to look at
The photograph we have of this work is not sharp enough to print at the quality we want, so we are not selling it for now. We are looking for a better one.
About the work
- Artist
- John William Waterhouse
- Date
- 1910
- Reference
- XDV-2896
What the museum label doesn't tell you
Look at her hands: still holding the flowers, not yet let go. Waterhouse painted this same woman at least three times over twenty years, always at this exact moment - before the fall, before the water. He planned a fourth scene, 'Ophelia in the Churchyard,' meant to close the story with her burial. He never painted it: cancer struck around 1915 and he died in 1917. So the series, without meaning to, ended up as unfinished as its subject - frozen forever on the threshold, never reaching the grave he himself had imagined. Coincidence that the painter obsessed with drowning women never painted their funeral?
