{"id":3812,"date":"2022-02-17T16:20:53","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/?p=3812"},"modified":"2022-02-17T16:27:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:27:06","slug":"elizabeth-siddal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/victorian\/famous-people\/elizabeth-siddal\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Siddal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) – the family name was ‘Siddall’ but she signed with the shorter spelling – is best known as the wife of\u00a0Rossetti<\/a>\u00a0and the subject of many\u00a0Pre-Raphaelite<\/a>\u00a0pictures. She was also an amateur painter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siddal had no formal art training. She was introduced to the minor Pre-Raphaelite Walter H. Deverell in 1849, sitting for his\u00a0Twelfth Night\u00a0as Viola, and then became a model for the whole Pre-Raphaelite group. She was the girl looking after the priest in\u00a0Holman Hunt’s\u00a0Converted British Family Rescuing a Priest, the\u00a0Ophelia\u00a0in the famous picture by\u00a0Millais<\/a>, and sat regularly for\u00a0Rossetti\u00a0from 1852, becoming his pupil and girlfriend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through Rossetti, Siddal met\u00a0Ford Madox Brown\u00a0and then\u00a0Ruskin<\/a>, who became her patron in around 1855, buying everything she had drawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, Siddal seems to have become addicted to Laudanum some time before 1860, the year she finally married Rossetti. She had a miscarriage the following year and died from an overdose of Laudanum in February 1862, aged just 32.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siddal worked mainly in watercolour, producing a range of small pictures from the mid-1850s. She was also was a poet<\/a>. It is unclear what influence her drawings had on Rossetti’s work, but claims that he copied a lot from her seem false. Rossetti was already developed as a painter, and Siddal’s work from the beginning is totally in his style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her paintings do show some good and imaginative compositions, and good colours, but carried out in a weak manner. She had no idea of drapery or of texture, and her self portrait is feeble and lifeless. Her only training was due to Rossetti, and he was no draughtsman and, it seems, an indifferent teacher. Her existing work consists of the small watercolours, and drawings that would have been good for woodcuts – early works in a career that might have lead to greater things had she not died too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siddal’s most important work,\u00a0Clerk Saunders, is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The\u00a0Ladies’ Lament (from Sir Patric Spens)\u00a0is in the\u00a0Tate Gallery, as is\u00a0A Lady offering a Pennant to a Knight’s Spear. Other work is at the\u00a0Ashmolean Museum, including a\u00a0Madonna and Child, and a\u00a0Madonna and Child with an Angel\u00a0is in the Delaware Art Museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) – the family name was ‘Siddall’ but she signed with the shorter spelling – is best known as the wife of\u00a0Rossetti\u00a0and the subject of many\u00a0Pre-Raphaelite\u00a0pictures. She was also an amateur painter. Siddal had no formal art training. She was introduced to the minor Pre-Raphaelite Walter H. Deverell in 1849, sitting for his\u00a0Twelfth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3812"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3815,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions\/3815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}