.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of cornflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do "dead men fingers" call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring 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
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch to muddy death.
In Act IV, Scene 7 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Queen Gertrude enters with news of the death of Ophelia. The young girl, driven half out of her mind at having been cruelly rebuffed by Hamlet, accidently drowned by falling from a willow-tree while picking flowers along the bank of a river.
The revival and wider publication of Shakespeare's plays helped to fuel the Romantic movement in France during the early decades of the 19th century. In 1823 the novelist Stendhal published his brochure Racine et Shakespeare, a call to the young minds of France to seek an alternative to the stultifying classical conventions of art inherited from the Napoleonic era. In 1827 the Irish actress Harriet Smithson electrified audiences at the Odéon Theatre in Paris with her English language performances of the roles of Ophelia, Juliet and Desdemona. Victor Hugo, the paragon of the Romantic movement in French letters, published his study William Shakespeare in 1864.
Eugène Delacroix worked on his sequence of sixteen Hamlet lithographs between 1835 and 1859, including one that depicted the death of Ophelia, dated 1843. Sir John Everett Millais painted his celebrated Ophelia (Tate Gallery, London) in 1852, and the theme was later taken up by many Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Redon turned Ophelia into one of his mythological heroines, who appears in as many as twelve masterpieces (Wildenstein, nos. 891-907), many of which incorporate otherworldly floral displays, embellishing the image of Shakespeare's “fantastic garlands.” Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath noted that, “Women as tragic lovers, martyrs and saints, along with women as mediums of transcendental forces, occupy a large place in his oeuvre. Taking his cue from sagas, myths and legends, he produced compelling images that distilled a tale’s essential mood rather than illustrating an event from it. Hamlet fired Redon’s imagination in this way” (Odilon Redon, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2014, p. 128).
The present painting is one of Redon's most subtle and lyrical representations of Ophelia. The artist depicts her with closed eyes and with harmonious fluid lines for her body, continuing the careful inclination of her head. “Redon sees her as a dreamer. The closed eyes in her gentle face suggest a gaze turned inward, away from the material world and toward a visionary realm…He decreases her physicality by intermingling her body with plants and aquatic creatures, thereby linking her to the origins of all living things” (ibid., p. 128).
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of cornflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do "dead men fingers" call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring 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
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch to muddy death.
In Act IV, Scene 7 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Queen Gertrude enters with news of the death of Ophelia. The young girl, driven half out of her mind at having been cruelly rebuffed by Hamlet, accidently drowned by falling from a willow-tree while picking flowers along the bank of a river.
The revival and wider publication of Shakespeare's plays helped to fuel the Romantic movement in France during the early decades of the 19th century. In 1823 the novelist Stendhal published his brochure Racine et Shakespeare, a call to the young minds of France to seek an alternative to the stultifying classical conventions of art inherited from the Napoleonic era. In 1827 the Irish actress Harriet Smithson electrified audiences at the Odéon Theatre in Paris with her English language performances of the roles of Ophelia, Juliet and Desdemona. Victor Hugo, the paragon of the Romantic movement in French letters, published his study William Shakespeare in 1864.
Eugène Delacroix worked on his sequence of sixteen Hamlet lithographs between 1835 and 1859, including one that depicted the death of Ophelia, dated 1843. Sir John Everett Millais painted his celebrated Ophelia (Tate Gallery, London) in 1852, and the theme was later taken up by many Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Redon turned Ophelia into one of his mythological heroines, who appears in as many as twelve masterpieces (Wildenstein, nos. 891-907), many of which incorporate otherworldly floral displays, embellishing the image of Shakespeare's “fantastic garlands.” Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath noted that, “Women as tragic lovers, martyrs and saints, along with women as mediums of transcendental forces, occupy a large place in his oeuvre. Taking his cue from sagas, myths and legends, he produced compelling images that distilled a tale’s essential mood rather than illustrating an event from it. Hamlet fired Redon’s imagination in this way” (Odilon Redon, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2014, p. 128).
The present painting is one of Redon's most subtle and lyrical representations of Ophelia. The artist depicts her with closed eyes and with harmonious fluid lines for her body, continuing the careful inclination of her head. “Redon sees her as a dreamer. The closed eyes in her gentle face suggest a gaze turned inward, away from the material world and toward a visionary realm…He decreases her physicality by intermingling her body with plants and aquatic creatures, thereby linking her to the origins of all living things” (ibid., p. 128).