#preraphealite

I love the Pre-Raphaelites, otherwise known as the Victorian Avant-Garde. I've been fascinated by them ever since I first saw John Everett Millais' 'Ophelia', a painting so beautiful, of one of literatures most tragic characters. 

I love the fact that he has taken a character from a play and placed her in the real world. She couldn't have asked for a more idyllic place to drown, and neither could any set designer working on a production of Hamlet.

Here is another Pre-Raphaelite painting of the famous British Actress Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent.

This painting is very different because its subject is an actress in costume, rather than the actual character. BUT what sets this painting apart, is the fact that Singer-Sargent actually attended the opening performance of this production of Macbeth in 1888, and was immediately inspired to paint this portrait. Ellen Terry herself wrote about her costumes in a letter to her daughter~

 "I wish you could see my dresses. They are superb, especially the first one: green beetles on it, and such a cloak! The photographs give no idea of it at all, for it is in colour that it is so splendid. The dark red hair is fine. The whole thing is Rossetti—rich stained-glass effects."

Rossetti! As in Dante Gabriel Rossetti, another member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood who, from a young age, also had a passion for Shakespeare.

But I digress- I want to focus on the dress that Ellen Terry is wearing in this painting. It was made to look like a) Chainmail and b) Snakeskin.The most amazing aspect of this dress to me is the shimmer, achieved by roughly 1,000 beetle wings. The Green Jewel Beetle to be exact.

So lets do the math: Macbeth opened with Ellen Terry as Lady M. in 1888 and it is now 2014...so that makes this dress 126 years old. The dress was restored between 2009 and 2011 at a price just shy of two million U.S. dollars and was put on display in Terry's home in Great Britain. 

Oh and did I mention the cape? Complete with the gold lions found on Scotland's royal coat of arms.