Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story by Jan Marsh - A review

Elizabeth Siddal is remembered as a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel and the muse and wife of Gabriel Rossetti. She is cast as a tragic heroine much like the Ophelia she modelled in the renowned Millais painting. But Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story overturns this myth. ‘Lizzie’ is presented as an aspirational and independent woman, artist and poet who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to let it be known.

With extraordinary stories, including previously undiscovered details of Siddal’s journeys across the UK and to the south of France, Jan Marsh reclaims Siddal’s narrative from the historical record. She brings new perspective to the post-natal, mental trauma Elizabeth suffered after a stillbirth. Furthermore, she casts new light on the renowned story of Siddal’s grave being exhumed for Rossetti’s poems.

Jan Marsh explores the finer, little known details of Siddal’s life, including her four months at art school in Sheffield, which Rossetti’s brother always denied. In addition to this, few will know how Siddal was often regarded as difficult and ungrateful.

A beautiful production, this illustrated book contains many of Siddal's own images which feature alongside Rossetti's at Tate Britain.

Historical record tends to forget or misremember women, but with Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story, Jan Marsh forces us to take a closer look and see a very different picture. Siddal was not passive and lacking in agency; she was a woman, artist and poet with a strong mind, flourishing career and an admirable talent.

Jan Marsh is a biographer and curator who pioneered the feminist understanding of women in the artistic circle around the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She followed this with individual life stories and scholarly studies that bring hitherto neglected women into the historical record, together with ground-breaking exhibitions, notably Pre-Raphaelite Sisters at the National Portrait Gallery in 2019-20. In Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story she presents a radical new account of the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite model and artist, who died tragically young.

Publisher:  Pallas Athene

Publication date: 6 April 2023

Hardback – 165 x 198 mm – 158 pages

101 colour and black-and-white images

Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

There was an English dinner here on Christmas Day, ending with plum-pudding, which was really very good indeed, and an honour to the country. I dined up in my room where I have dined for the last three weeks on account of bores. First class, one can get to the end of the world but one can never be alone or left at rest.  (Elizabeth Siddal writing her travel memories in a fit of boredom from Hotel des Princes, France, 1855).

Elizabeth Siddal Her Story is an illustrated look at the life of Elizabeth Siddal and those around her before and after meeting the men of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The paintings and drawing by herself and her husband, painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti are currently being shown in the Tate Britian exhibition, The Rossettis. 

"Lizzie" needed an upgrade shall we say; a much needed complete study of her life and Jan Marsh is just the woman to do it.  Her findings from researching the Siddall family to Elizabeth's first working jobs, to being discovered, to becoming a sitter, then a muse to finding love with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her illness, her weight, her looks. Was she just very independent in nature or was she doing her best to serve as inspiration for all these creative men!  It must have been hell.

Jan Marsh has debunked a very long standing myth, she has shared two letters Elizabeth Siddal wrote herself that give insight into Elizabeth's wonderful sense of humor. Jan Marsh writes about the relationship with John Ruskin, her trip to France, as well as what inspired Elizabeth Siddal to writer her poetry and paint her paintings. 

You will travel with The Rossettis (Gabriel and Lizzie) as they travel through England meeting some of his dearest artist friends and why Elizabeth did not meet all of her husband's immediate family.  Sharing artisitic experiences between the two I found to be very romantic, i.e. Rossetti's many poems about Lizzie but to get a glimpse into Elizabeth's poems and paintings while in love with Gabriel was just beautiful.

When it came to the sad end of Elizabeth's life, Jan Marsh uses  her paintings to support the well known surviving documentation surrounding her death, her burial, her funeral, etc. 

I will put the link to the publishing company for ayone who would like to purchase, Pallas Athene

Getting to know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall on her birthday: (July 25, 1829-February 11, 1862)

 Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall 

Title

Miniature Portrait of Elizabeth Siddall

Date

1860-61; 1963

Creator

Dante Gabriel Rossetti; George C. Williamson

Description

This delicate, palm-sized portrait sits encased in a jeweled frame made of gold, bowenite, opal, diamonds, and star sapphires. The object was given to The Walters Art Museum in 1963 with a large collection of portrait miniatures. Unlike a traditional painted miniature, this piece is a black and white photograph—likely a carte-de-visite—overpainted in gouache. The first photograph of the object included in our gallery shows the front of the framed photograph. A three-quarter length portrait of a figure sits before a dark blue background, head turned slightly to the left, with her eyes downcast and her hands clasped. A light red shawl is draped around her shoulders and held in place with her hands, partially obscuring a brown striped dress. White accents draw our eyes to her sleeves and the frill at her neck, where a brooch is fastened. In the second image, the engraved inscription on the reverse of the frame, added in the early 20th century, asserts:

This represents / Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, / who on the 25th of May 1860 became the wife of / Dante Gabriel Rossetti. / In May 1861 she gave birth to a child, / and died on February 10th 1862, / having unhappily taken an overdose of Laudanum / in order to relieve a severe form of Neuralgia / by which she was afflicted. / This Portrait was painted by her husband / between December 1860 and May 1861, / and is the only portrait the artist painted / of his wife after her marriage. / He painted her portrait numberless times / before her marriage and made many sketches of her / but afterwards made one slight sketch in pencil / which has been lost / and painted this miniature.

JO BRIGGS ON WHAT THIS OBJECT TEACHES US:

If we choose to accept the inscription on the back of the frame at face value, this portrait remains the only locatable photograph of Elizabeth Siddall. For Dr. Briggs, the photograph’s physical history, as well as its literal “framing,” prompts valuable questions about Siddall’s agency and our role as viewers in the portrait’s ongoing history.

Dr. Briggs explains that the portrait appears to date from around 1860, based on the format of the photograph and the style of the sitter’s dress. However, no written evidence links the photograph or the overpainting to either Siddall or Rossetti. The earliest reference Dr. Briggs has found to the photograph’s existence dates to 1906, when it entered the collection of the American banker J. Pierpont Morgan. It was Morgan, working with his personal curator of portrait miniatures, George C. Williamson, who added the frame and the inscription. The inscription attempts to fix Siddall first and foremost in her traditional feminine roles of wife and mother, while also mythologizing the manner of her death and emphasizing above all her status as a tragic Pre-Raphaelite muse. Dr. Briggs suggested that the frame’s inscription may have been intended by Williamson to persuade Morgan of the portrait’s value and authenticity. The inscription may thus have more to do with the exchange between these two men than it does with Siddall herself.

For Dr. Briggs, the portrait’s ambiguous history and the inscription on the back of the frame relate directly to the issue of Siddall’s agency. As feminist art historians have pointed out, Siddall was a Pre-Raphaelite artist in her own right—but it is her role as model and muse to her husband and his circle that defined and continues to define her. If this is indeed a photograph of Siddall, Dr. Briggs suggested that here, yet again, she has been effaced by Rossetti and his legacy.

The issue of Siddall’s agency has led Dr. Briggs to reflect on her own curatorial role in the portrait’s ongoing history: does looking for further documentary evidence of the photograph’s provenance group her with art experts like Williamson, who attempt to exert their control over this object and Siddall’s image? Dr. Briggs urges us to consider where we can locate Siddall’s agency within the composition of the portrait, pointing out that the way the sitter crosses her hands over her chest recalls Rossetti’s painting “Beata Beatrix.” Did Siddall work with Rossetti to find this introspective stance, which both “attracts and deflects the male gaze”? Or did she perhaps decide for herself how to pose for the photograph?

Ultimately, Dr. Briggs reminds us that this portrait is forever altered not only by the layer of gouache and the elaborate frame but also by the narrative that has built up around it—and each of these elements mediate our relationship to the object. (Jo Briggs, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland).

Elizabeth Siddall, 1860, photograveure  and autograph letter from Elizabeth Siddal to Georgiana Burne-Jones, 12 March 1861 Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Chatham Place

Tuesday Morning

My dear Little Georgie,

     I hope you intend coming over with Ned tomorrow evening like a sweet meat, it seems so long since I saw you dear.  Janey will be here I hope to meet you. 

With a willow pattern dish full of love to you and Ned.

Lizzie

 Elizabeth Siddal's beautiful poem archived, Ashmolean Museum, U.K.

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, Manuscript sheet of poetry. 

"Thy strong arms around me love."

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Thy strong arms are around me, love
My head is on thy breast;
Low words of comfort come from thee
Yet my soul has no rest.

For I am but a startled thing
Nor can I ever be
Aught save a bird whose broken wing
Must fly away from thee.

I cannot give to thee the love
I gave so long ago,
The love that turned and struck me down
Amid the blinding snow.

I can but give a failing heart
And weary eyes of pain,
A faded mouth that cannot smile
And may not laugh again.

Yet keep thine arms around me, love,
Until I fall to sleep;
Then leave me, saying no goodbye
Lest I might wake, and weep.

Lovers listening to music by Elizabeth Siddall, 1854

Rossetti's Portraits: Upcoming exhibition at The Holburne Museum 24 September 2021 to 9 January 2022

 

Blue Silk Dress (Jane Morris), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868 © Society of Antiquaries of London: Kelmscott Manor

Rossetti’s Portraits features some of his most iconic artworks, including The Blue Silk Dress (Jane Morris), 1868, which reveal the artist at the height of his creative powers, alongside his less well-known, but equally compelling early drawings of friends, family and fellow Pre-Raphaelite artists. The exhibition also explores the artist’s intimate relationship with his muses and their influence on his depiction of beauty.  Extract from Holburne Museum website

I have been working on Mrs. Morris's portrait and have nearly finished it. I think it is better than the run of my doings. Dante Gabriel Rossetti letter to Alice Boyd of 24 July 1868.

Combining paintings, drawings, and photography from across the artist’s career, including some of his most celebrated and accomplished works, Rossetti’s Portraits opens with drawings of his early social circle, including members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood during the early 1850s. Extract from The Holburn Museum website.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s portrait of William Holman Hunt was sketched on the morning of 12th April 1853

As young artists starting their careers, ambitious to ‘make it’ in the art world, the Pre-Raphaelites frequently practised drawing each other to improve their observational skills, as well as saving money on models. These drawings were often created out of mutual affection and were exchanged as gifts. Rossetti’s portrait of William Holman Hunt was sketched on the morning of 12th April 1853 as one of several portraits created by the group to send out to Thomas Woolner, a Pre-Raphaelite sculptor who had emigrated to Australia to try his luck on that continent.  Extract from The Holburne Museum website

The Blue Bower by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1865

The sitter is Fanny Cornforth, Rossetti's housekeeper and mistress.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

Cornforth is the focus of one of Rossetti’s masterpieces, The Blue Bower (1865, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts), a painting infused with symbolism relating to the sitter. The blue cornflowers refer to her surname, while the passion flowers suggest her fiery nature. Indeed, the work has the feel of a character study; Cornforth commands the spectator’s gaze, as if to challenge their observation of her beauty.  Extract from The Holburne Museum website.

Elizabeth Siddal drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

May 1854, in Hastings, V&A

The next section features a selection of intimate and poignant drawings from the 1850s of the artist’s wife and pupil, Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), showing the many facets of their relationship as a couple, as artistic peers, and as artist and model.

Famous for posing in John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851-52, Tate), Siddal modelled for several Pre-Raphaelite artists before sitting exclusively for Rossetti from 1852 onwards. Alongside her work as a model, Siddal pursued her own artistic interests and was the only woman to exhibit at the 1857 Pre-Raphaelite display at Russell Place. Rossetti made a series of beautifully intimate studies of her carrying out everyday tasks and the works displayed at the Holburne allow visitors to see the daily life that ‘Lizzie’ and Rossetti shared together. Siddal frequently suffered from ill-health and a drawing he made of her during a stay in Hastings where they had gone for her to recuperate from the latest bout of illness features in the show. Siddal died tragically in 1862 aged only 32.  Extract from The Holburne Museum. 

For more information about the exhibition, The Holburne Museum

Dante Gabriel Rossetti napping and Lizzie Siddal

D.G. Rossetti Napping by Ford Madox Brown

Writing on right side reads:

D.G.R. 

as seen

August 18/79

FMB

I love the way he’s balancing his legs on the top of the sofa.

Rossovestita by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1850

Note Rossetti’s name on top:

Dante Rossetti

Fece in Londra

This was the first time Elizabeth Siddal modeled for Rossetti.

St. George and the Princess Sabra by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1862
 Elizabeth Siddal sat for this just a few days before her death.

Upcoming Exhibition: 'Beyond Ophelia' - A Celebration of Lizzie Siddal, Artist and Poet

I am here to help spread the exciting news of an upcoming exhibition in the United Kingdom about the art works of Elizabeth Siddal known as Lizzie Siddal. Anyone who loves the Pre-Raphaelites will instantly know who she was.  

How I wish I could go but I am in the United States. As always, I have the best and most loyal friends and followers here. I ask you if anyone attends this coming March and would like to send me jpg images, any written materials as well, I would be most grateful.  

Found below are text and image taken from the National Trust page. Also, linked below.

Lovers Listening to Music by Elizabeth Siddal, pen and ink drawing, 1854

'Beyond Ophelia' - A Celebration of Lizzie Siddal, Artist and Poet

Wightwick Manor, National Trust

1st March- 24th December 2018

Only the second solo exhibition of her artwork, this exhibition at Wightwick Manor reinstates Lizzie Siddal as an important and influential artist and poet.

A professional member of the Pre-Raphaelite artistic circle, she is, however, remembered today mainly as the model for the iconic Millais painting, Ophelia, and as wife and muse of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

‘Beyond Ophelia’ examines Siddal’s style; subject matter; depiction of women; her influence on other artists; and the prejudice she faced as a professional female artist in the patriarchal Victorian art world.

In 1961, Lady Rosalie Mander, an art historian and biographer of the Pre-Raphaelites, and her husband Sir Geoffrey Mander, bought a large collection of Lizzie Siddal artworks at auction for Wightwick Manor. Wightwick’s collection of 12 Siddal artworks, along with loans of other drawings previously owned by the Manders’, are bought back together in this exhibition for the first time.

For more information on the upcoming exhibition,  National Trust UK

Remembering Mrs. Elizabeth Rossetti (nee Siddal) (25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862)

Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A young married woman in her thirties dies in her sleep while her husband is out with friends.Upon her husband's insistence, she stays home that evening after feeling tired but not complaining of illness.  The woman was Mrs. Dante Rossetti, Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti nee Siddal.  This skimmed over version presents the basis of the only surviving story told by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Speculation over Mrs. Rossetti's health has ranged over the decades as being an intestinal disorder, tuberculosis, anorexia as well. Her husband was known to have had numerous affairs with his sitter/models causing Eliabeth Siddal much stress on her nerves. It is believed that she took laudanum partly to cope with this stress and it increased in dosage over the years after suffering a stillbirth of a baby girl in 1861 leaving her with post-partum depression.  

An excerpt from the Daily News from February 1862, and found in inquest records, recalls the moments of the day Mrs. Rossetti died, 

"Mr. Rossetti stated that on Monday afternoon, between six and seven o’clock, he and his wife went out in the carriage for the purpose of dining with a friend at the Sabloniere Hotel, Leicester Square. When they had got about halfway there his wife appeared to be very drowsy, and he wished her to return. She objected to their doing so, and they proceeded to the Hotel, and dined there. They returned home at eight o’clock, when she appeared somewhat excited. He left home again at nine o’clock, his wife being then about to go to bed. On his return at half-past eleven o’clock he found his wife in bed, snoring loudly and utterly unconscious. She was in the habit of taking laudanum, and he had known her take as much as 100 drops at a time, and he thought she had been taking it before they went out. He found a phial on a table at the bedside, which had contained laudanum, but it was then empty. A doctor was sent for, and promptly attended. She had expressed no wish to die, but quite the reverse. Indeed, she contemplated going out of town in a day or two, and had ordered a new mantle which she intended wearing on the occasion. He believed she took the laudanum to soothe her nerves. She could not sleep or take food unless she used it. Mr. Hutchinson, of Bridge Street, Blackfriars, said he had attended the deceased in her confinement in April with a stillborn child. He saw her on Monday night at half-past eleven o’clock, and found her in a comatose state. He tried to rouse her, but could not, and then tried the stomach, and washed it out, when the smell of laudanum was very distinct. He and three other medical gentlemen stayed with her all night, and she died at twenty minutes past seven o’clock on Tuesday morning. “ The inquest jury gave a verdict of ‘Accidental Death.’

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal was not only her husband's model, muse, but the focal point of such adoration and love that it bordered on obsession. She wanted to be an artist in her own right. She wrote poetry, painted and drew during her marriage and relationship with Rossetti.  Her work is preserved and archived in museums throughout the United Kingdom. I especially was surprised to find this one she wrote, 

Early Death by Elizabeth Siddal

Oh grieve not with thy bitter tears
The life that passes fast;
The gates of heaven will open wide
And take me in at last.
Then sit down meekly at my side
And watch my young life flee;
Then solemn peace of holy death
Come quickly unto thee.
But true love, seek me in the throng
Of spirits floating past,
And I will take thee by the hands
And know thee mine at last.

In reading about the death of Mrs. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's brother, William Michael Rossetti describes his brother's mindset and household during the six days between his wife's death on 11 February, 1862 through the day of the funteral on 17 February, 1862. Dante Gabriel kept his wife's body in her coffin open inside their house. Now maybe this was a custom of the day, during the nineteenth-century but it still surprised me. Just imagining the grief during those days. Today, the deceased family member and loved one's body stays at the funeral home until burial. However, back in 1862 for The Rossetti's this was the scene, 

 

"Our mother and sisters and myself were constantly with Dante during those harrowing days which intervene between a death and a funeral. His anguish was keen, but his mind clear. Brown was often there, and the sister of Lizzie playfully nicknamed “the Roman.” I recollect a moment of great agitation, when my brother, standing by the corpse, was crying out, “Oh Lizzie, Lizzie, come back to me!” On the second or third day after death Lizzie looked still lovelier than before, and Dante almost refused to believe that she was really dead-it might be a mere trance consequent upon the laudanum. He insisted that Mr. Marshall should be called in to decide with what result I need not say." 

“They stood beside the coffin's foot and head.
Both gazed in silence, with bowed faces—Grey
With bony chin pressed into bony throat.”

A woodcut by Arthur Boyd Houghton 

from The Broadway Annual, Volume 1, 1867-8

 In this issue of The Broadway Annual appeared a long poem by William Michael Rossetti called, 'Mrs. Holmes Grey' along with the above woodcut. Focus on the two men standing beside a coffin with a dead young woman inside it; her face only visible. Well, here is one stanza from Mrs. Holmes Grey, 

Grey's face turned whiter, and his fingers twitched.

It is my turn to speak, then":-and he rose,

Taking a candle: “come this way with me.”

They stepped aside into a neighbouring room.
Grey walked with quiet footsteps, and he turned
So noiselessly the handle of the door
That Harling fancied some one lay asleep
Inside. The hand recovered steadiness.

The room was quite unfurnished, striking chill.
A rent in the drawn window-blind betrayed
A sky unvaried, moonless, cloudless, black.
Only two chairs were set against the wall,
And, not yet closed, a coffin placed on them.

Harling's raised eyes inquired why he was brought
Hither, and should he still advance and look.
“It is my wife,” said Grey; “look in her face.”
This in a whisper, holding Harling's arm,

 And tightened fingers clenched the whispering.

Harling could feel his forehead growing moist,
And sought in vain his friend's averted eyes.
Their steps, suppressed, creaked on the uncovered boards: They stood beside the coffin's foot and head.
Both gazed in silence, with bowed faces—Grey
With bony chin pressed into bony throat.

The woman's limbs were straight inside her shroud.
The death which brooded glazed upon her eyes
Was hidden underneath the shapely lids;
But the mouth kept its anguish. Combed and rich
The hair, which caught the light within its strings,
Golden about the temples, and as fine
And soft as any silk-web; and the brows A perfect arch, the forehead undisturbed;
But the mouth kept its anguish, and the lips,
Closed after death, seemed half in act to speak.
Covered the hands and feet; the head was laid

 Upon a prayer-book, open at the rite
Of solemnizing holy matrimony.
Her marriage-ring was stitched into the page.

Grey stood a long while gazing. Then he set
The candle on the ground, and on his knees
Close to her unringed shrouded hand, he prayed,
Silent. With eyes still dry, he rose unchanged.

They left the room again with heeded steps.
On friendly Harling lay the awe of death
And pity: he took his seat without a sound.
Some of the hackneyed phrases almost passed
His lips, but shamed him, and he held his peace.

Study for Ophelia by John Everett Millais, 1852