![\"Ophelia](\"http:\/\/www.iainclaridge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/SarahBernhardtOphelia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHer clothes spread wide;
\nAnd, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
\nWhich time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
\nAs one incapable of her own distress,
\nOr like a creature native and indued
\nUnto that element: but long it could not be
\nTill that her garments, heavy with their drink,
\nPull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
\nTo muddy death.\u201d<\/p>\n
William Shakespeare
\nHamlet, Act IV, Scene VII.<\/p>\n
Celebrated as one of the greatest actresses of all time, Sarah Bernhardt was also recognised for her talent in the medium of sculpture, a passion which complemented her success as a stage artist. The present marble relief of\u00a0Ophelia<\/em>\u00a0is a rare surviving work signed by Bernhardt, and among her most important to appear at auction in recent memory.\u00a0 Deeply sensuous in form and conception,\u00a0Ophelia<\/em>\u00a0testifies to the iconic actor\u2019s considerable skill as a sculptor, while\u00a0epitomising\u00a0Bernhardt\u2019s fascination with the morbid eroticism that surrounds Shakespeare\u2019s heroine.<\/p>\n Born in Paris to a courtesan and an unknown father, Sarah Bernhardt received her first training as an actor at the Com\u00e9die-Fran\u00e7aise from which she was expelled, prompting a brief period of activity as a courtesan. Resuming her acting career in 1866, Bernhardt began to develop a reputation on the stage at\u00a0prestigious\u00a0Parisian theatres. She soon found unprecedented fame across Europe and beyond, enjoying several worldwide tours during the 1880s and 1890s. Known in particular for her magisterial portrayals of tragic characters, Sarah Bernhardt\u2019s legendary status continued into the early 20th century, when she starred in silent films and remained active on the stage until her death in 1923.<\/p>\n Sarah Bernhardt was as flamboyant a personality off the stage as she was in her dramatic roles. Famously, the actress acquired a coffin in the 1860s, in which she would pose and sleep regularly throughout her life. By thus fetishising her hypothetical corpse, Bernhardt displayed an erotically charged obsession with death that was both personal and symptomatic of her time \u2013 a time when morgues were places of public spectacle, and morbidly beautiful phenomena such as the death mask of \u2018L\u2019Inconnue de la Seine\u2019 captivated the art scene.<\/p>\n It was the same 19th century environment which gave rise to an artistic fascination with the character of Ophelia in William Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0Hamlet<\/em>. The tragic fate of the heroine, who becomes Hamlet\u2019s lover but falls victim to the Prince\u2019s plotting of revenge and, in her eventual madness, drowns in a stream, was depicted by painters such as Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix and, notably, John Everett Millais.<\/p>\n Bernhardt\u2019s activity as a sculptor began in the 1870s with guidance from Roland Mathieu-Meusnier and Jules Franceschi. Taking a studio in 1873, she went on to model a number of highly accomplished works, such as the group\u00a0Apr\u00e8s la Temp\u00eate<\/em>, which she exhibited at the Salon in 1876.<\/p>\n Despite being the most famous actress of her day, Sarah Bernhardt had never performed the role of Ophelia at the time her marble was conceived \u2013 it was not until 1886 that she appeared as Ophelia in a production of\u00a0Hamlet<\/em>, followed by a controversial turn as the eponymous character of Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy in 1899. Yet Bernhardt\u2019s prominent obsession with death had led to a long-lived fascination with the tragic heroine, and her sculptural representation of Ophelia became one of her most significant works. Modelled in 1880, the relief accompanied Bernhardt on her first tour of North America before being shown at the Paris Salon in 1881. Reviews of\u00a0Ophelia<\/em>\u00a0were positive, praising it as a work ‘of which any sculptor might be proud’ (see Mason,\u00a0op. cit<\/em>., p. 312) \u2013 a choice of words which highlights Bernhardt’s unique status as both a woman and a full-time actress active in the profession of sculpture.<\/p>\n The relief is thought to exist in a handful of versions in marble, the present example being an important rediscovery. The only other version whose location is known is that in Copenhagen, which was gifted to the Royal Theatre by Bernhardt in June 1881 and remains on display in its foyer. Another version is recorded to have been a gift to the Austrian painter Hans Makart, while a third was exhibited at the World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Photographs reveal very slight variations between the marbles, and it is possible that the present version is that which was given to Makart. Bernhardt\u2019s personal attachment to the work is revealed by her inclusion of a photograph of\u00a0Ophelia<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 probably the plaster \u2013 in her 1907 memoirs.<\/p>\n Bernhardt\u2019s high relief represents Ophelia in bust-form, her head turned, her eyes closed, wearing a garland of flowers, and enveloped by water which merges with her tresses. The subtlety of Bernhardt\u2019s modelling is showcased in the beautifully detailed flowers, as well as the delicate waves of the \u2018glassy stream\u2019, whose texture contrasts with the smooth and bulging form of Ophelia\u2019s exposed right breast. Though seemingly depicted in the moment of her death, the woman\u2019s sensuous open-mouthed expression, overt nudity, and languid pose exude an undeniable eroticism. Unaware of her suffering, the heroine appears to embrace her death as an ecstatic consummation. Bernhardt thus offers an original\u00a0interpretation of\u00a0the references to female sexuality and deflowering made by Shakespeare throughout the scene of Ophelia\u2019s madness and Queen Gertrude\u2019s speech describing her death, which makes use of sexualised imagery such as \u2018long purples \/ That liberal shepherds give a grosser name\u2019.<\/p>\n In her later theatrical interpretations of the character, Bernhardt would add a heightened level of eroticism to\u00a0Ophelia’s\u00a0death by choosing to appear on stage herself as the dead Ophelia \u2013 instead of the conventional coffin \u2013 in the graveyard scene, in which\u00a0her\u00a0brother Laertes throws himself upon her body. Mirroring her sculptural portrait of the heroine, Bernhardt was described thus in a review by Joseph Knight (1886, as quoted in Young,\u00a0op. cit<\/em>., p. 23): \u2018She is once more seen with her face rigid as marble, and her body, covered with flowers, \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n RELATED LITERATURE![\"Ophelia](\"http:\/\/www.iainclaridge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Ophelia_-_Sculpture_by_Sarah_Bernhardt_1880.jpg\")
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\nM. E. Mason,\u00a0Making Love\/ Making Work: The Sculpture Practice of Sarah Bernhardt<\/em>, doctoral thesis, The University of Leeds, May 2007, vol. II, pp. 310-348; A. R. Young, \u2018Sarah Bernhardt\u2019s Ophelia\u2019,\u00a0Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation<\/em>, 8, no. 1, 2013<\/p>\n