‘Arts Greatest Supermodel’: Uncovering the mystery behind Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddal depicted in John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, 1851-2

Aeliya Bilgrami, 3rd Year English and History

Before Edie Sedgwick, Elizabeth Siddal was ‘Art's Greatest Supermodel’. Siddal was the face of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, posing for iconic pieces such as John Everett Millais’ 1852 painting Ophelia, among others, and ultimately shaping ideas of female beauty amongst the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. But as is the destiny of many female artists, Elizabeth Siddal is remembered through her relationship with a man, and mythologised as a suicidal and waifish muse, rather than as a daughter, friend and artist in her own right.

William Allingham, the poet, wrote of her “short, sad, and strange life; it must have seemed to her like a troubled dream.”. Tragic depictions of her as the doomed Ophelia, or an elusive coquette, have overshadowed much of what we know of her.

However, Elizabeth Siddall was also an accomplished poet and painter herself, despite a legacy shrouded in objectification and overshadowed by death. Siddal was born in London in 1829 to Charles Crooke Sidall and Elizabeth Eleanor Evans. The family had a modest income, her father working as a cutlery maker, and their daughter educated herself in poetry by reading Tennyson from a butter wrapper.

In 1849, Siddal met Walter Deverell, who was struggling to find a muse, and soon employed her to pose for a painting based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. With this, Siddal was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English poets, painters and artists, and was enlisted to pose for artwork by many of them. The most famous of these artworks is John Everett Millais’ Ophelia. During the painting of this, as she lay motionless in a cold bathtub in the middle of winter, Siddal contracted a bout of pneumonia, from which she never recovered, and was likely treated with laudanum-a painkiller made from opium-after her family threatened Millais with legal action to pay her hospital bills.

While posing for Deverell in 1850 she met the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was from the noble Italian Rossetti family. Despite the class difference, the two became lovers, and were engaged by 1852, when Rossetti forbade her from modelling. The two had an affectionate relationship with Rossetti fondly dubbing her ‘Lizzie’, and obsessively creating artwork inspired by her. Siddal began to study with him around this time and painted a self-portrait differing from the idealised beauty portrayed by the Pre-Raphaelites that was based on her features.

However, despite the couple's seemingly loving relationship, Rossetti feared judgement from his upper class family, and delayed even introducing Elizabeth to his parents and siblings, let alone getting married to her. As well as this, Rossetti was notorious for philandering, with Elizabeth often fearing replacement. We can see that Rossetti also went to lengths to influence and mould Siddal, changing the spelling of her surname from ‘Siddall’ to ‘Siddal’ perhaps to conceal her working class background, as well as introducing her to the art critic John Ruskin to allow her to legitimise her career. Ruskin subsidised her career and paid her £150 pounds a year.

In 1853, Elizabeth began to suffer from recurrences of ill health, likely linked to her first case of pneumonia. This coupled with her anxieties over Rossetti’s faithfulness and the extent of his commitment to her left her often bed-ridden and unable to eat. She was given a prescription for laudanum and eventually built up an addiction.

Rossetti continued stringing her along, for instance in 1857, he borrowed money to purchase a licence, only to spend it on something else. After falling victim to many false promises and judgement from their peers and families, by 1857, Elizabeth left London. Though Rossetti visited her during her illness, they were no longer in a relationship. However, by 1860, Elizabeth’s health had considerably worsened, and her family contacted her benefactor John Ruskin, who alerted Rossetti. Racked with guilt upon witnessing her condition, Dante Gabriel Rossetti married Elizabeth Siddal with no family or friends in attendance.

Elizabeth fell pregnant in 1861, but unfortunately gave birth to a stillborn daughter, after which she struggled with severe postpartum depression. On 10th February, 1862, Rossetti returned home late and was unable to wake Siddal, after finding an empty phial of laudanum by her bedside. He summoned a doctor immediately, but they were unable to save her. She died later on in the night and the death was ruled as accidental, though Rossetti admitted that her suicide letter had been disposed of, as proof of this would have prevented a Christian burial.

Siddal even in death was unable to break free from Rossetti’s influence, and her grave was even exhumed in 1869 in order to take back a book of poems written by Rossetti about her, after he feared losing his ability to paint. Memories of Elizabeth continued to haunt Rossetti till the end of his life, and he begged in his final years to not be buried with her at Highgate for fear of her vengeful spirit.

Throughout her life and even in death Elizabeth was depicted through tragic artwork and poetry. Her career was closely micromanaged and monitored by an unfaithful yet obsessive husband, and even in death she was figuratively silenced following the destruction of her suicide note. However, instead of viewing Siddal as passive, we can interpret such accounts as the one about her contracting pneumonia while modelling for Millais as exhibiting her devotion to art. She was also the only woman to have her work displayed amongst the work of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood in an 1857 exhibition. Furthermore, the real-life “Lizzie” may have been the influence for her courageous, wise namesake in the celebrated poem Goblin Market, published shortly after by her sister-in-law, Christina Rossetti.

From her few letters that survive, we can also catch a glimpse of Siddal displaying a remarkable wit, as she describes her annoyance at administrative disorganisation, as well as accounts written by her friend Georgiana Burne-Jones confirming ideas of her ‘strong personal feelings’ towards art and her husbands desire to control her, ‘always looking over her shoulder, and sometimes taking pencil or brush from her hand to complete the thing she had begun.’

References

Merryn Allingham, ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti And Elizabeth Siddal’

https://merrynallingham.com/19th-century/dante-gabriel-rossetti-and-elizabeth-siddal/

LizzieSiddal.com https://lizziesiddal.com/portal/

 Biography of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, TATE https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/elizabeth-eleanor-siddal-494

Lucinda Hawskley, ‘The tragedy of art’s greatest supermodel’, BBC Culture, 2020 https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200103-the-tragedy-of-arts-greatest-supermodel

Ori Hashmonay, ‘The Tragic Death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ethereal Muse, Elizabeth Siddal’, Sotheby’s, 2019 https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-tragic-death-of-dante-gabriel-rossettis-ethereal-muse-elizabeth-siddal

Emily Zarevich, ‘Elizabeth Siddal, the Real-Life “Ophelia’’, JSTOR Daily, 2023 https://daily.jstor.org/elizabeth-siddal-the-real-life-ophelia/