Elizabeth+Siddal

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal [Siddall] was born in London on July 25, 1829 to Charles Crooke Siddall and Elizabeth Eleanor Evans. Elizabeth Eleanor Evans came from a Welsh background and Charles Crooke Siddall was an Englishman. Two different documents provide two seperate careers of Charles Siddall, as Pazdro indicates. The Post Office Commercial Directories indicates that he worked as a cutler in London in the 1840's but he was listed as an optician on Elizabeth's marriage certificate to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1860 (Pazdro 10).

Elizabeth Siddal was the second of six children by Charles and Elizabeth. She received “an ordinary education, comfortable to her condition in life” (Pazdro 10). She was literate and showed interest in Tennyson’s poetry at an early age. Her family was lower middle class. Starting in her teen years, Siddal worked as a milliner’s assistant in Cranbourne Alley, off Leicester Square, in London (Pazdro 10). Around the age of twenty, working this post, she encountered Walter Howell Deverell and was persuaded to model for him. Walter Deverell was a new member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, replacing James Collinson after his resignation in 1850. Deverell was attracted to her unusual yet remarkable beauty and asked her to pose for his painting of Viola from William Shakespeare’s //The Twelfth Night.// Due to her lower middle class status Siddal wore plain, modest clothing, and this fact combined with her unique beauty made her the living embodiment of the Pre-Raphaelite concept of the pure woman (Wood 100). Modeling for Walter Deverell would be the first of many paintings by the Brotherhood depicting Elizabeth as well as the beginning of her symbolic value as the ideal Pre-Raphaelite woman.

Elizabeth Siddal had “delicate features and profusion of rich, dark auburn hair” (Wood 100). These features are the reason Deverell noticed her through the window of a milliner’s shop, which completely transformed her life. Siddal sat as a model for countless paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, aka PRB, most of which were executed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their working relationship developed into a romantic one that, after nearly ten years of courtship, resulted in marriage in 1860. Esther Wood’s //Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement// states that Rossetti and the PRB “soon found their model to be as good as she was beautiful” (Wood 100) The innumerable amount of paintings and sketches by Rossetti of Siddal show his great interest in her. Some of his most famous paintings she posed for are and //.//

But Siddal was not solely defined as a model for the PRB and wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1851, as her relationship with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood progressed, likely encouraged by Rossetti, Siddal started to sketch, paint and write poetry, some of which was published posthumously by members of the Brotherhood. Her interest seemed to have been centered on medieval literary themes and portraits. She started out doing minor sketches and illustrations to poems. An example of her work is the illustration inspired by Tennyson’s ////. Both Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown were among her supporters and advised her how to improve her works (Elkin, OAO).

“By 1852, Elizabeth Siddal sat exclusively for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her face disappeared from other Pre-Raphaelite canvases and invaded nearly all of Rossetti’s” (Pazdro 21). Siddal pursued her own avenues of art and patronage in this period. In 1855, John Ruskin, in exchange for the majority of her art as she completed them, offered her patronage and an allowance by which she should support herself. On his advice Siddal also studied for a short time at the Sheffield School of Art (Elkin, OAO). Other than her paintings and sketches Elizabeth Siddal produced many poems including "The Lust of the Eyes", "Dead Love", "A Year and a Day", "Worn Out" and "At Last".

Elizabeth Siddal’s life was marked by a lifetime of recurring illness and her untimely death at age 33. She died on February 11, 1862 in her home, as the result of an addiction to laudanum. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was devastated by her death, which was possibly a suicidal overdose taken when he was out of the house. Rossetti’s grief was overwhelming evidence of this was his burial of his poetic manuscripts with her in the coffin as a symbol that the best part of him died with her he also tried to communicate with her through spiritual medium after her death (Marsh 10). Pazdro notes that “Rossetti could not believe she was dead and brought in three other doctors to confirm her condition” (Pazdro 48). When he eventually did bury her he placed his manuscript of poems in the coffin. He had Siddal’s corpse exhumed seven years after her death to retrieve and publish poems which he included in his 1870 //Poems//. --S.B./Engl386/UVic/Fall2012

Elkan, Jenny. " Siddal, Elizabeth." //Grove Art Online//. //Oxford Art Online//. Oxford University Press. Web. 24 Oct. 2012. < [] >. Pazdro, Roberta Jane. //“The Life and Art of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal(1829-1862)//: A Re-examination.” Diss. U of Victoria, 1954. Print. Wood, Esther. //Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.// London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1894. Print. Collins, T. J. and Rundle, V. J. eds. //Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory//. Peterborough: Broadview, 1999. Print. Marsh, Jan. //The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal//. London: Quartet Books, 1989. Print.
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