Ophelia among the Flowers

Ophelia, the doomed heroine in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, rests within a luminous space filled with vibrantly-coloured flowers. Unlike her vivid surroundings, her face is drained of colour - we are not sure if she is dead or only sleeping. This association of youthful, but ill-fated, beauty with dreaming, sleep and death was a popular theme in much of the art and literature of the nineteenth century, particularly in its closing decades.

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) creates a deliberately ambiguous and dream-like response to Shakespeare's drama, rather than a literal illustration of it. He makes full use of the rich colours of pastel to create a glowing and almost abstract design that evokes the effect of music.

Credit: Bought with a contribution from the Art Fund, 1977