The new face of beauty

  Two-and-a-half centuries after William Shakespeare's Hamlet came to the stage, the tragic-romantic figure of Ophelia reignited the Victorian imagination in paintings, poetry, and plays. Among the era's many Ophelias, none proved so indelible as Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais's richly detailed rendering of the tragic heroine drowning. Now in the collection of the Tate, Ophelia (1851-1852) is one of the defining images of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. [...]
  While it may be difficult to see today, when Millais debuted Ophelia in 1852, it scandalized critics. Pre-Raphaelite depictions of their models (often their wives, lovers, and sisters) dismayed the conventions of Victorian good taste. “The open mouth is somewhat gaping and babyish...,” wrote one critic. [...]
  The English painter Joshua Reynolds had emphasized that the artist should attempt to idealize nature – including in depictions of female beauty. The Pre-Raphaelites, instead, chose unconventional looking women with heavy mantles of hair, hooded eyes, and full lips as their models. These women's bold looks disturbed Victorian viewers whose norms of beauty and grace emphasized the delicate and the demure. Nevertheless, by the 1870s, the very features had become widely admired in artistic circles. [...] Within just 20 years, the artists had expanded the understanding of beauty.