KONSTANTIN EGOROVICH MAKOVSKY, 1839-1915

Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky was born in 1839 in Moscow into a well-known, though not wealthy noble family. After graduating from the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg he started to work independently and thanks to his masterly brushwork and feel for the pictorial medium, his work was in great demand. Makovsky very quickly became renowned for his skilful society portraits and brilliant genre scenes celebrating the boyar roots of Russian aristocracy.

Ophelia, Shakespeare’s tragic heroine from Hamlet, was a popular subject in nineteenth century Salon painting. Makovsky painted several versions of Ophelia and one of them, painted in 1884 on a considerably smaller scale, hangs in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The offered lot differs not only in size but also in composition from the aforementioned Ophelia. Makovsky depicts the most dramatic scene of the story where Ophelia, driven mad by her lover Hamlet’s assassination of her father, stands on the edge of the stream in which she will drown herself. With great ease of brushstroke and a sombre chromatic palette Makovsky creates an image of strong, sensual quality. Ophelia’s absent, trance-like gaze underscores her tragic fate as an innocent victim of destructive forces.

There is a willow grown aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come…

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook.

Hamlet, act IV, scene 7