Dying for Art - An Exploration into the Beautification of Death

Edgar Allen Poe once said, 'The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world.'... A rather odd thing to say, albeit a common feeling in the nineteenth century, and a fascination that has lived on; perhaps it isn't quite so romantic anymore. The romanticisation, or beautification, of death, has been immortalised in every form of art; painting, photography, fashion, literature, poetry, film, etc. In many cases, it is the beauty of a woman's death that is most sought after, most written about, and most portrayed in art. In this piece, with the focus on painting and photography, I will be exploring the representation of death in the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and how a woman's suicide became a work of art.

The magnum opus of paintings to emerge from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was Ophelia by John Everett Millais, 1851-52. Even those unfamiliar with the small group of painters in Victorian London recognise this beautiful portrayal of the tragic death of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Pre-Raphaelites were infatuated with the perfect female beauty and surrounded themselves with visually striking and ethereal models. These women, some wives and lovers of the painters, took on many roles when posing for paintings such as damsels from fairy tales, Goddesses and mythical creatures from classical mythology, and the fallen ladies, like Ophelia, from literature and poetry. 

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52 (Tate Britain, London)

The Pre-Raphaelite models were, what we would now call, the "it girls" of their time. They represented the most desirable assets of femininity and were quite literally manifestations and products of the male gaze. The artists favoured passivity, purity and innocence in their women. As awful as it sounds, a dead woman is all of these and more; the epitome of desirability in the nineteenth century. 

Millais' Ophelia, portrays the maiden floating lifelessly in a river, enwreathed with flowers and foliage such as violets, daisies, poppies and herbs. The painted Ophelia is dressed in a beautiful silver and bronze gown that softly billows with the slight movement of the water, her chest adorned with sparkling jewels that also add to the embellishment of her dress. Her hair, although mostly under the water, is soft and long with a slight kink where the water hasn't touched it; this is one of the rare Pre-Raphaelite paintings that is not dominated completely by the long, curly locks of the models. Around the central figure of Ophelia is a consuming scene of nature; overgrown bushes, a fallen tree trunk, moss in the river, and various aquatic plants. Ophelia is enclosed in a frame of flourishing greenery, serving as a contrast to her pale, deceased body. Representing and spending time amongst nature was another pleasure that the group of painters lavished and glorified. In Millais' painting, particularly, the scenes of nature are another portrayal of life and death; the flowers laying in Ophelia's hand represent her beauty and femininity, yet also portray her fate; she is the wilting flower. 

Ophelia's death was the result of countless situations that take place in the play and is interpreted in many ways. The most popular theory is that her death was a reaction to Hamlet's rejection of her love and mistreatment of her, this interpretation was favoured by the Pre-Raphaelites. The idea that Ophelia died from heartbreak, or died for love, indulged their own fantasies or fetish of tragic love and romance. This suggested that a woman's own life was only worthy with the love of a man, and without that love, she simply could not live. Ophelia's death was a romantic theory and her apparent suffering validated male power and control over women. In a sense, Ophelia was more valuable in her death, as Catherine McCormack suggests in her book Women in the Picture, when she says 'Millais' Ophelia and all its many tormented derivatives romanticise the suffering of women in order to make their lives meaningful. In this case, it's taken to the extreme that Ophelia actually dies. Which is also the point when she becomes the most beautiful, most loved and most perfect.'

The romanticisation of death and female suffering in this painting expands further than the portrayal of Ophelia. The most famous Pre-Raphaelite muse, Elizabeth Siddal posed for Millais' Ophelia; though she was also a skilled painter and poet herself. She posed in a wedding gown for Millais, in a bathtub for hours, the only heat came from a few lamps that surrounded the tub. The background and river were painted separately in Surrey on the bank of the Hogsmill River. Millais did not notice when the lamps had gone out, leaving the floating Siddal in freezing cold water. It is said that Siddal did not complain, she lay there in the cold water until the painting was finished. As a result, she developed a severe cold. A common misconception was that she died of pneumonia after modelling for Millais in the freezing tub; a romantic connection to Ophelia's death. However, her actual reason for death is coincidentally echoed in the painting through a small red poppy floating beside Ophelia's hand. After the loss of her baby at birth, Siddal took an overdose of Laudanum, an opiate derived from poppies, and tragically died at 32. 

Elizabeth Siddal became the Ophelia of her time. She had a huge cultural impact, not only was she the muse of a number of Pre-Raphaelite artists, but she became the muse of many writers also. Oscar Wilde, much like all the other romantic poets and writers of the time, had a fascination with the Pre-Raphaelites and their work, specifically with the late Elizabeth Siddal and her portrayal of Ophelia. In his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891, Wilde manifests both Ophelia and Elizabeth into his character Sibyl Vane, who meets the same fate as Ophelia and whose looks are reminiscent of Siddal's striking and memorable features; her long coiled hair and pale ivory skin. The infatuation with beautiful, dying maidens in the nineteenth century, in any form of the arts, was undeniable; it was a very prominent and consistent theme.

The representation of fallen women during this pinnacle era in literature and art is one that is significant in the study of this time, particularly in feminist studies. Elizabeth Siddal is the leading lady in any discussion on the romanticisation of death in art. Siddal's story is fascinatingly tragic and her impact on the arts at the time is evident; she will forever remain an art-historical icon.

Robert Wiles, Evelyn McHale, 1947

Following in the footsteps of Ophelia was Evelyn McHale, whose death was named the most beautiful suicide in the world. On the 1st of May 1947, Evelyn McHale jumped off the 86th floor of the Empire State Building in New York and landed on top of a parked car in an elegant and peaceful pose. A photography student, at the time, named Robert Wiles took a photograph of her minutes after she died, this photograph became iconic and depicts McHale in an Ophelia-like scene, the crumpled steel of the car roof acting as water. It is a beautiful image that has been used and referenced in pop culture countless times. In 1962, Andy Warhol assumed the infamous image of McHale and created a repeat print painting, as a part of his Death and Disaster series of deaths and incidents reported in new papers, called Suicide: Fallen Bodies. The original black and white photograph is quite striking. It is taken from an angle that creates the illusion that her body is splashing into a river of thick black tar. There is hardly any visible damage to her, other than her slightly mangled-looking foot, she looks as if she is soundly sleeping. In Andy Warhol's reproduction, painted in blue and black, the repetition of the image distorts it making the viewer desensitized to the tragedy that the image is capturing. This was his intention, he said that when you see these horrible pictures of tragic deaths and horrible injuries, it loses all effect; it was a response to the mass consumption of fast-paced media and how it is difficult to really feel anything when you are exposed to it so often. McHale was a normal, unknown young woman whose corpse became an iconic figure. Her death was entirely beautified and the image of her body on the car roof is still used and manipulated in pop culture today.

Andy Warhol, Suicide: Fallen Bodies, 1962

Much like Ophelia, McHale is yet another dead woman (this time, a real woman) whose beautiful, poised corpse became an object or a muse for art and aesthetic culture. They represent an idealised image of femininity, a dead woman presents the most desirable: perfect and passive. McCormack, when discussing this idea, asks 'And what better way to express the control of beauty and passion than to preserve it by stilling it and making it incorruptible?' Ultimately, the obsession with dead women in art is communicating that women are most desirable when they are dead, when they are silent, without control, and their beauty and youth are preserved in a pretty painting or a black and white photograph.

I hope you enjoyed this quite morbid post. I much preferred researching and writing about art without academic pressure and stress from university. I have plans to revisit this topic in the future with a focus on other forms of art like fashion and film. 

A new post will be coming very soon...

Thank you for reading!

Love, Bella ♡

Bibliography and Further Reading:

Catherine McCormack, Women in the Picture, 2021 

Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Women, 1987

Stephanie Chatfield, Elizabeth Siddal and Sylvia Plath are not your Suicide Girls http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/elizabeth-siddal-sylvia-plath-not-suicide-girls/

Lucinda Hawksley, Elizabeth Siddal: The Tragedy of the Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, 2005

Christian Hite, The Art of Suicide: Notes on Foucault and Warhol https://www.jstor.org/stable/24586574

Andy Warhol's Paintings of Death and Disaster https://publicdelivery.org/andy-warhol-death-disaster/