We Are Some of the Best Art a Tradgedy

The tragedy of art's greatest supermodel

The extraordinary story of the legendary beauty Lizzie Siddal is both surprising and tragic, and led to a strange myth that persists today. Lucinda Hawksley explores her legacy.

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In the winter of 1849-1850, the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt were painting together, when their friend Walter Howell Deverell burst into the studio. The company announced excitedly, "You fellows tin't tell what a stupendously beautiful brute I take institute… She's like a queen, magnificently alpine." With these words, the unlikely dazzler of Elizabeth Siddal began to make history.

This story was originally published in January 2020

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Today, few people remember the artist Deverell – who died of Bright'southward (kidney) illness at the historic period of 27 – just he was a vibrant member of the grouping of artists and writers that revolved around the newly formed Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This surreptitious guild of seven immature men had been founded in 1848 by Rossetti, Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, students at London's Royal Academy. As is existence highlighted in the National Portrait Gallery'south exhibition, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, the Pre-Raphaelite motion likewise encompassed female person models, artists and writers. 'Lizzie' Siddal began every bit a model, then learnt to paint, and also wrote poetry.

Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1852, is ane of the paintings on display at an exhibition at London'due south National Portrait Gallery (Credit: Delaware Art Museum)

At the time of Deverell's pronouncement, Siddal was working at a milliner's shop, most Leicester Foursquare, in cardinal London. She worked long hours in unpleasant atmospheric condition, and her family was worrying about her already frail health. Perhaps this was why Siddal's mother made the surprising decision to permit her girl to piece of work equally an artist's model – something viewed as disreputable, and even as synonymous with prostitution. Deverell did not cartel approach Lizzie'southward mother himself. Instead he sent his own very respectable mother, in her grand railroad vehicle, to talk virtually the finances. Mrs Siddal was awed past the arrival of a carriage at her modest abode on the Former Kent Road.

Initially, Siddal started working function-fourth dimension as a model, and remained part-time at the lid shop. After Deverell painted her equally Viola in 12th Nighttime, Holman Hunt painted her for A Converted British Family unit Sheltering a Christian Priest from the Persecution of the Druids (1850), and every bit Sylvia in Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1850-1851). She modelled for Rossetti for the outset time in 1850, for one of his lesser-known paintings, Rossovestita.

'Like a queen' is how Walter Howell Deverell described Lizzie Siddal – she was the model for Viola in his painting 12th Night (c.1850) (Credit: Alamy)

Co-ordinate to his patron, John Ruskin, throughout their ensuing human relationship, Rossetti drew and painted Siddal thousands of times.

Although today Lizzie Siddal's willowy build, gaunt features and lustrous copper-coloured hair are considered signs of beauty, in the 1850s beingness very thin was non considered sexually attractive, and red hair was described past one female person journalist as "social suicide". Through her modelling work and the success of the paintings she appeared in, Lizzie helped change the public opinion of dazzler.

Inside a couple of years, Lizzie was earning enough to leave the hat store. As the model for Millais's celebrated Ophelia (1851-1852), her face became famous. Other artists clamoured to paint her, but Rossetti, past this time recognised as her lover, became jealous and asked her to model simply for him. Charles Allston Collins (younger brother of Wilkie Collins) recalled request Siddal to sit for him, merely receiving a "freezing" refusal.

The dear story between Siddal and Rossetti is similar that of a tortured adolescent picture script: for ten years they were 'engaged', but Rossetti refused to set up a wedding ceremony date. Neither was easy to live with: Siddal was fond to the drug laudanum, and Rossetti was serially unfaithful.

Siddal learnt how to paint, and her artwork Clerk Saunders (1857) was caused past an influential collector (Credit: Alamy)

In 1854, Siddal'due south career as an artist began. Rossetti was teaching her, and when Ruskin saw her piece of work he proclaimed her a "genius". Her paintings were oftentimes derided by art critics, yet Siddal had merely simply begun learning, whereas the men of her circle had been honing their arts and crafts, under expert tutelage, for many years. Her surprisingly quick progress shows why Ruskin took such an interest in her. He gave her an annual salary of £150 to enable her to paint. In her total-time chore at the chapeau store, she had earned £24 a twelvemonth.

In 1857, she was the sole female exhibitor at the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition in London, where one of her paintings, Clerk Saunders (1857), was bought past an influential U.s.  collector, Charles Eliot Norton. Shortly subsequently, Siddal, whose health and relationship had been worsening for some fourth dimension, gave up her annuity from Ruskin. Rossetti and Ruskin had been controlling her life and she wanted to escape. Using her savings, she took ane of her sisters to the spa town of Matlock in Derbyshire. Then, instead of returning to London, she travelled to Sheffield, her begetter's birthplace, to stay with her cousins. Siddal soon moved into a lodging house, and enrolled at the Sheffield Schoolhouse of Fine art, adamant to make information technology as an creative person on her ain.

Ophelia past John Everett Millais (1851-2) is 1 of the Pre-Raphaelite movement's most famous paintings – the model was Siddal (Credit: Private drove)

Rossetti made occasional journeys to visit her, merely letters from friends in London revealed his affairs with other women, and their relationship concluded in the middle of 1858. Much of what happened in her life during the side by side couple of years remains a mystery. Then, in the jump of 1860, she became dangerously ill. Her family unit contacted Ruskin and he told Rossetti, who rushed to be with her. Siddal had moved to the Sussex town of Hastings, a pop place for recuperating invalids. Rossetti arrived with a marriage licence and, as presently as she was well plenty, they were married.

The beginning of the stop

They took an elongated honeymoon in Paris, from which they returned with a pair of onetime street dogs they had adopted as their pets. Lizzie realised she was pregnant, and Rossetti contentedly painted and drew her, including the wistful Regina Cordium (1860). She  was delighted at the prospect of motherhood, but tragically she was addicted to laudanum. Perhaps this was why, on 2 May 1861, she gave birth to a stillborn daughter.

Siddal as well posed for the artist William Holman Hunt – for his painting Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1851) (Credit: Alamy)

She never recovered from the depression that engulfed her post-obit her baby's death. Their marriage suffered, and she became convinced Rossetti was, once over again, existence unfaithful – although his friends claimed he was true-blue to her during their wedlock.

On the evening of 10 February 1862, the Rossettis went out to dinner with the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Later they returned home, Rossetti went to teach a night class at the Working Men's College. Before he left, he saw Lizzie settled into bed – she had taken her usual dose of laudanum and there was nearly half a bottle left. When he returned from piece of work, the canteen was empty. Lizzie was in a sleep so deep he was unable to wake her – and she had written him a note. Yelling for their landlady to fetch a md, Rossetti hid the incriminating letter.

Despite the efforts of 4 doctors, Lizzie Rossetti died in the early hours of xi Feb 1862. On the advice of their friend, Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti burnt her suicide note. This was to ensure she was not declared a suicide and and then denied a Christian burial. At the time of her expiry, Lizzie was pregnant again. Perhaps she feared her baby had stopped moving and could not bear to go through a second stillbirth.

Lizzie'south story does non end with her death. Due to a macabre postscript to her life, she has become a gothic cult figure. Rossetti placed into his wife'due south bury the but copy of the poems he had written. Seven years after, he decided he wanted them dorsum.

In great secrecy, on an fall night in 1869, her bury was exhumed from its resting identify in London's Highgate Cemetery. Rossetti, who was past now considered 'insane' by some of his acquaintances, was not present. The whole operation was masterminded by his friend and self-appointed agent, Charles Augustus Howell, a flamboyant teller of tales. There were no lights in the graveyard, so a large fire was built.

Regina Cordium (Queen of Hearts) was painted past Rossetti in 1860, with Lizzie, who was past then the creative person'south wife, as the model (Credit: Alamy)

Howell subsequently told Rossetti that, when the coffin was opened, his wife'south trunk was beautifully preserved. She was not a skeleton, he mendaciously claimed, only as beautiful as she had been in life, and her hair had grown to make full the coffin with a brilliant copper glow which shone in the firelight. Indebted to Howell's gloriously conceived fiction is the myth of the prevailing dazzler of the original supermodel, even in death – and it is a myth that ensures that, to this 24-hour interval, many people from effectually the world strangely believe that Lizzie remains undead.

A less fanciful tribute to Lizzie Siddal was written several decades after, by a sometime fellow pupil at the Sheffield School of Fine art. She wrote to a local paper, identifying herself merely as 'AS': "It was a slight acquaintance I had with her, but information technology made a lasting impression on my memory."

Lizzie Siddal died at the age of 32, only her extraordinary legacy continues. Her husband'south reclaimed poetry was published, to keen acclaim – although the story of his poems' provenance was kept a carefully guarded secret.

Lucinda Hawksley is the author of Lizzie Siddal, The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, published by Andre Deutsch. Find out more than via @lucindahawksley

Pre-Raphaelite Sisters is at the National Portrait Gallery in London until 26 January.

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200103-the-tragedy-of-arts-greatest-supermodel

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