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W. Holman Hunt's praise of the painting

We must first put ourselves back to the date when it was painted. The exhibition world was full of pictures of fairies and attendant spirits, and without exception we may see that these were all conceived as graceful human pigmies. Millais, at one burst, treated them as elfin creatures, strange shapes such as might lurk away in the shady groves and be blown about over the surface of a mere, making the wanderer wonder whether the sounds they made were anything more than the figments of his own brain. Millais' was the poetic imagination not to be passed over unnoted, although its originality was hastily taken by ordinary minds as the point on which to condemn it. The landscape of "The Woodman's Daughter," painted in 1850, might not be so conclusive in the testimony it offers of a new evangel, but the charms throughout the background of the " Ophelia," and the pathetic grace of the love-wrapt maiden, are enough to proclaim that not in one feature alone, but in the whole picture, a new art was born. [Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, II, 399

Bibliography

Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1905.

The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery/Allen Lane, 1984. No. 24. Pp. 74-75.

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Last modified 30 November 2021