Elizabeth Siddal - Model For The Pre-Raphaelites

Model For The Pre-Raphaelites

The spelling 'Siddall' was changed to Siddal when Dante Gabriel Rossetti dropped the second 'l', first noticed by Deverell in 1849, while she was working as a milliner in Cranbourne Alley, London. Whether Siddal had any artistic aspirations is unknown, though she loved poetry. She was employed as a model by Deverell and through him was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelites. 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."

When she started work as an artist's model, Siddal was in the enviable position of working at Mrs Tozer’s millinery part-time and was ensured a regular wage even if modelling did not work out, an unusual opportunity for a woman of her time.

While posing for Millais' Ophelia in 1852, Siddal floated in a bathtub full of water to represent the drowning Ophelia. Millais painted daily into the winter putting lamps under the tub to warm the water. On one occasion the lamps went out and the water became icy cold. Millais, absorbed by his painting and did not notice and Siddal did not complain. After this she became very ill with a severe cold or pneumonia. Her father held Millais responsible, and forced him to pay for her doctor's bills. It was thought that she suffered from tuberculosis, but some historians believe an intestinal disorder was more likely. Others have suggested she might have been anorexic while others attribute her poor health to an addiction to laudanum or a combination of ailments. In his 2010 book At Home, author Bill Bryson suggests Siddal may have suffered from poisoning, because she was a "devoted swallower" of Fowler's Solution, a so-called complexion improver made from dilute arsenic.

Elizabeth Siddal was the primary muse for Dante Gabriel Rossetti throughout most of his youth. Rossetti met her in 1849, when she was modelling for Deverell and by 1851, she was sitting for Rossetti and he began to paint her to the exclusion of almost all other models and stopped her from modelling for the other Pre-Raphaelites. The number of paintings he did of her are said to number in the thousands. Rossetti's drawings and paintings of Siddal culminated in Beata Beatrix which shows a praying Beatrice (from Dante Alighieri) painted in 1863, a year after her death.