Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddal
Siddal, c. 1860
Born
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall

(1829-07-25)25 July 1829
Holborn, London, England
Died11 February 1862(1862-02-11) (aged 32)
Burial placeHighgate Cemetery, London
Other namesElizabeth Rossetti
Occupations
  • Artist
  • poet
  • artist's model
Spouse
(m. 1860)

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862), better known as Elizabeth Siddal (a spelling she adopted in 1853[a]), was an English artist, art model, and poet. Siddal was perhaps the most significant of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas of female beauty were fundamentally influenced and personified by her. Walter Deverell and William Holman Hunt painted Siddal, and she was the model for John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia (1852). Early in her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal became his muse and exclusive model, and he portrayed her in almost all his early artwork depicting women.

Siddal became an artist in her own right and was the only woman to exhibit at an 1857 Pre-Raphaelite exhibition. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean Museum. Sickly and melancholic during the last decade of her life, Siddal died of a laudanum overdose in 1862 during her second year of marriage to Rossetti.

  1. ^ Sonstroem 1970, p. 45.
  2. ^ "Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Head of Elizabeth Siddal (1855)". COVE. 17 December 2019. Archived from the original on 4 May 2023. Retrieved 4 May 2023.
  3. ^ Snow, Emily (6 March 2023). "7 Pre-Raphaelite Artworks by Elizabeth Siddal". TheCollector. 6. The Lady of Shalott, by Elizabeth Siddal. Archived from the original on 15 April 2023. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
  4. ^ "Death of a Lady from an Overdose of Laudanum". Miscellaneous. Sheffield Independent. Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. 15 February 1862. p. 3. OCLC 610063112 – via British Newspaper Archive. Eliza Eleanor Rossetti's Obituary


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