Ophelia

The first Ophelia painting I saw was done by John Millais. It's a meticulously rendered, striking image of the body of a beautiful young woman floating in the river (after her suicide as depicted in Shakespeare's Hamlet).

Then I saw Odilon Redon's version, and I fell in love with it immediately. It's a much less literal depiction of the same event, but all the more surreal and haunting because of its haziness.

I get a profound sense of melancholy and quite grief from gazing at it. It doesn't have the same theatricality as Millais'. Somehow it seems extraordinarily peaceful as well.

R.I.P. Ophelia