A 19th-century artwork that has inspired artists from Surrealist Salvador Dalí to contemporary painter Ed Ruscha may be the influence behind the cover for Taylor Swift’s forthcoming album, The Life of A Showgirl.
The dramatic teal green and reddish-orange cover art, shared by Swift on Instagram last week, was shot by fashion photography duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot. Punctuated with glittery text and fractured visuals, it depicts Swift in a showgirl-inspired bejeweled bodysuit, floating partially submerged in a pool of cloudy water — an apparent reference to the famous painting “Ophelia” (1851–2) by British artist John Everett Millais. The first song on the tracklist is also titled “The Fate of the Ophelia.”
Inspired by William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet (1599–1601), Millais’s work portrays Prince Hamlet’s rejected lover Ophelia in the moments before her tragic death by drowning in a brook. Like Swift in her album cover, she is shown singing and mostly underwater, with her palms facing upward. Framed by wildflowers and lush vegetation, she also wears a shimmery garb.
But unlike the painting’s subject, Swift makes direct eye contact with the viewer.
“Swift is looking at us, as if confronting us, while Millais’s Ophelia looks like she’s about to die,” pop culture and art historian Amelia Marran-Baden explained on TikTok.
Millais was a co-founder of the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood group, which sought to revive the style of Quattrocento Italian art. He painted the work in two settings: outside by the Hogsmill River in Surrey, and in his Gower Street studio in London, where artist and poet Elizabeth Siddal posed for him over four months in a bathtub. The sole woman included in a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood exhibition in 1857, Siddal was a fundamental muse for the all-male artist collective. The group often prioritized her physical qualities over her art practice and poetry, as was the fate of many women artists of the era. During her second year of marriage to painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal died of an opiate overdose at 32 years old.
“It’s my understanding that Ophelia is a character and woman who suffered because of the patriarchy, not unlike Elizabeth Siddal,” Marran-Baden said in her video.
Swift fans have also speculated about other cultural references in the album. For instance, some Reddit users pointed out that the cover art bears similarities to a photoshoot on the reality competition show America’s Next Top Model.
Subliminal messaging aside, it’s clear that the album is already having its own ripple effect. In addition to a plethora of memes, corporations have reportedly already begun incorporating the album’s glittery orange and green aesthetics into their marketing. (Sorry, Brat green.) The album is due to drop on October 3.
