In the 1852 Exhibition, when both the “Ophelia” and “The Huguenot” were exhibited, there was another beautiful “Ophelia” by Millais’ friend, Arthur Hughes, who is good enough to send me the following note about the two pictures:
“One of the nicest things that I remember is connected with an “Ophelia” I painted, that was exhibited in the Academy at the same time as his [Millais’] own most beautiful and wonderful picture of that subject. Mine met its fate high up in the little octagon room*; but on the morning of the varnishing, as I was going through the first room, before I knew where I was, Millais met me, saying, ‘Aren’t you he they call Cherry?’ (my name in the school). I said I was. Then he said he had just been up a ladder looking at my picture, there, but adding also very truly that I had not painted the right kind of stream. He had just passed out of the Schools when I began in them, and I had a most enormous admiration for him, and he always looked so beautiful — tall, slender, but strong, crowned with an ideal head, and (as Rossetti said) ‘with the face of an angel’. He could not have done a kinder thing, for he knew I should be disappointed at the place my picture had.”
*Commonly known as the “Condemned Cell”.
Index of Ophelia Pages