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Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (July 25, 1829 –
February 11, 1862) was a British artist's model, poet and artist who was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood.
Siddal was perhaps the most important model to sit for the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. Their ideas about feminine beauty were profoundly influenced by her, or rather she personified those ideals.
She was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's model par excellence; almost all of his early paintings of women are portraits of her. She
was also painted by Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, and was the model for Millais' well known
Ophelia (1852).
Early Life
Named Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, after her mother, Lizzie came into
the world on July 25, 1829 at the family’s home at 7 Charles Street, Hatton Garden. Her family was of English and Welsh
descent. At the time of Lizzie’s birth, her parents were not poverty stricken. Her father had his own cutlery-making
business. Around 1831, the Siddall family moved to the borough of Southwark, in south London, a less salubrious area than
Hatton Garden. It was in Southwark that the rest of Lizzie’s siblings were born: Lydia, to whom Lizzie was particularly
close, Mary, Clara, James and Henry. Although there is no record of her having attended school, Lizzie was able to read and
write, presumably having been taught by her parents. She developed a love of poetry at a young age, after discovering a poem
by Tennyson on a scrap of newspaper that had been used to wrap a pat of butter. This discovery was one of Lizzie’s inspirations
to start writing her own poetry.
Model for the Pre-Raphaelites
Siddal, whose name was originally spelt 'Siddall' (it was Rossetti
who dropped the second 'l') was first noticed by Deverell in 1849, while she was working as a milliner in Cranbourne Alley,
London. She was the daughter of Charles Crooke Siddall, a cutler who claimed that his family descended from nobility, and
his wife Elizabeth Eleanor Evans Siddall. Neither she nor her family had any artistic aspirations or interests. She was employed
as a model by Deverell and through him was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelites. The twenty-year-old with her tall thin frame
and copper hair was the first of the Pre-Raphaelite stunners. William Michael Rossetti, her brother-in-law, described her
as "a most beautiful creature with an air between dignity and sweetness with something that exceeded modest self-respect and
partook of disdainful reserve; tall, finely-formed with a lofty neck and regular yet somewhat uncommon features, greenish-blue
unsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliant complexion and a lavish heavy wealth of coppery golden hair."
Lizzie’s introduction to modeling was an extremely pleasant
entrance into what could be a sleazy world. At the start of her modeling career, Lizzie was in the enviable position of being
allowed to remain working at Mrs. Tozer’s part time, thereby ensuring herself a regular salary even if modeling did
not work out. This was an unusual opportunity for a woman of her time.
While posing for Millais' Ophelia (1852), Siddal had floated in
a bathtub full of water to model the drowning Ophelia. Millais painted daily into the winter with Siddal modeling. He put
lamps under the tub to warm the water. On one occasion the lamps went out and the water slowly became icy cold. Millais was
absorbed by his painting and did not notice. Siddal did not complain. After this session she became very sick with a severe
cold or pneumonia. Her father held Millais responsible, and forced him to pay compensation for her doctor's bills. It was
long thought that she suffered from tuberculosis, but some historians now believe that an intestinal disorder was more likely.
Some have suggested that she might have been an anorexic, while others attribute her poor health to an addiction to laudanum
or to a combination of ailments.
Elizabeth Siddal was the primary muse for Dante Gabriel Rossetti
throughout most of his youth. After he met her he began to paint her to the exclusion of almost all other models and stopped
her from modelling for the other Pre-Raphaelites. These drawings and paintings culminated in Beata Beatrix, painted in 1863,
one year after Elizabeth's death. She was used as a model for this painting, which shows a praying Beatrice (from Dante Alighieri).
Life with Rossetti
After becoming engaged to Rossetti,
Siddal began to study with him. In contrast to Rossetti's idealized paintings, Siddal's were harsh. This is very evident in
her self portrait, pictured above. Rossetti painted and repainted her and drew countless sketches of her. His depictions show
a beauty. Her self portrait shows much about the subject, but certainly not the floating beauty that Rossetti painted. This
painting is historically very significant because it shows, through her own eyes, a beauty who was idealized by so many famous
artists. In 1855 the art critic John Ruskin began to subsidize her career. Ruskin paid £150 per year in exchange for all drawings
and paintings that she produced. Siddal produced many sketches but only a single painting. Her sketches are laid out in a
fashion similar to Pre-Rapaelite compositions and tend to illustrate Arthurian legend and other idealized Medieval themes.
Ruskin also admonished Rossetti in his letters for not marrying Siddal and giving her the security she needed. During this
period Siddal also began to write poetry, often with dark themes about lost love or the impossibility of true love. "Her verses
were as simple and moving as ancient ballads; her drawings were as genuine in their medieval spirit as much more highly finished
and competent works of Pre-Raphaelite art," wrote critic William Gaunt in The Pre-Raphaelite Dream.
As Siddal came from a lower class family, Rossetti feared introducing her to his parents. "Lizzy" was also
the victim of harsh criticism from Rossetti's sisters. The knowledge that the family would not approve the wedding contributed
to Rossetti putting it off. Siddal also appears to have believed, with some justification, that Rossetti was always seeking
to replace her with a younger muse, which contributed to her later depressive periods and illness.
Ill-health and death
Siddal travelled to Paris and Nice for several years
for her health. She returned to England in 1860 to marry Rossetti. In the previous ten years he had been engaged to her and
then broken it off at the last minute several times. Stress from those incidents had affected her. She was now severely depressed
and her long illness had given her access to and addiction to laudanum. In 1861, Siddal became pregnant. She was overjoyed
about this, but the pregnancy ended in a stillborn daughter. Siddal overdosed on laudanum shortly after becoming pregnant
for a second time. Rossetti discovered her unconscious and dying in bed. Although her death was ruled accidental by the coroner,
there are suggestions that Rossetti found a suicide note. Consumed with grief and guilt Rossetti went to see Ford Madox Brown
who is supposed to have instructed him to burn the note – under the law at the time suicide was both illegal and immoral
and would have brought a scandal on the family as well as barred Siddal from a Christian burial.
Overcome with grief, Rossetti enclosed in Elizabeth's coffin a small journal containing the only copies
he had of his many poems. He slid the book into Elizabeth's flowing red hair. She was then interred at Highgate Cemetery in
London. In 1869, Rossetti was chronically addicted to drugs and alcohol. He convinced himself that he was going blind and
couldn't paint. He began to write poetry again. Before publishing his newer poems he became obsessed with retrieving the poems
he had slipped into Elizabeth's hair. Rossetti and his agent, the notorious Charles Augustus Howell, applied to the Home Secretary
for an order to have her coffin exhumed to retrieve the manuscript. This was done in the dead of night so as to avoid public
curiosity and attention, and Rossetti was not present. Howell reported to Rossetti that her corpse was remarkably well preserved
and her delicate beauty intact. Her hair was said to have continued to grow after death so that the coffin was filled with
her coppery hair. The manuscript was retrieved although a worm had burrowed through the book so that some of the poems were
difficult to read. Rossetti published the old poems with his newer ones; they were not well received by some critics because
of their eroticism, and he was haunted by the exhumation through the rest of his life.
Rossetti's relationship with Siddal is also explored by Christina Rossetti in her poem "In an Artist's Studio".
In an Artist's Studio
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel - every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams.
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