"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

Millais' "Ophelia" might be one of the modern day best and most well known representations of the character, but as I have said (briefly) before, critics at the time throughly hashed the painting.

While painting "Ophelia", Millais' behavior was not that of the modern artist of the time. For one thing, he spent more time on the background of the painting then the actual subject (which wasn't the practice of most artists of the time). He spent time out in Ewell (around 35 miles from London) searching for the perfect place to paint his background. He finally found a spot beside a river, and as he was painting, was picky about things such as the particular flowers that went into it, so that they would be easily recognizable to the viewers, and would reflect the ones mentioned in the play:

QUEEN GERTRUDE

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Let us also keep in mind that painting outside was also very uncommon back then.

A few quotes from critics:

“Yet what misconception so ever may characterize these works, they plainly declare that when this painter shall have got rid of the wild oats of his art, with some other vegetable anomalies, his future promises works of an excellent, which no human hand my have yet excelled".

"The open mouth is somewhat gaping and gabyish,--the expression is in no way suggestive of her past tale. There is no pathos, no melancholy, no brightening up, no last lucid interval. If she die swan-like with a song, there is no sound or melody, no poetry in this strain."