Elizabeth Siddal

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Standard Name: Siddal, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal
Nickname: Guggums
Through her work as model and muse, ES has been firmly ensconced as an icon of Pre-Raphaelitism. However, recent feminist reassessments of her visual art and poetry are reclaiming her as artistic subject rather than object. Jan Marsh writes in the catalogue to a 1991 exhibition of ES 's work at Sheffield's Ruskin Gallery , her artistic oeuvre is small both in size and range. But it was original, serious-minded and modestly successful, and deserves to be accorded a small but significant place in the history of Pre-Raphaelite art.
Marsh, Jan. Elizabeth Siddal, 1829-1862: Pre-Raphaelite Artist. The Ruskin Gallery, 1991.
28-9
Black-and-white drawing of Elizabeth Siddal seated with her right elbow placed in the centre of a book and her hand on her chin.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates William Allingham
He collaborated with artist and poet Elizabeth Siddal , who created illustrations for a volume of his ballads.
Publishing Gillian Allnutt
GA 's second poetry pamphlet, Lizzie Siddall : Her Journal, was published in a limited edition of 250 copies, by Greville Press .
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Textual Features Gillian Allnutt
Only twelve pages long, GA 's pamphlet is a successful sustained attempt to inhabit the mind ofElizabeth Eleanor Siddal , a dressmaker, artist and poet,who became the Pre-Raphaelites' favourite model, married D. G. Rossetti
Cultural formation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith , Christina Rossetti , Elizabeth Siddal , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Anna Mary Howitt , and Mary Howitt conducted a series of seances at the Hermitage, the Howitt family home.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
97
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
In spring 1854 Barbara Leigh Smith took care of Elizabeth Siddal , Dante Gabriel Rossetti 's ailing fiancé and model, at her house near Hastings. Her ties to the Pre-Raphaelite circle later weakened, but...
Occupation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
In a review of the exhibition, a critic for the Athenæum praised BLSB 's Algerian landscapes.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
97
Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn's Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists reproduces several of BLSB 's works, including a sketch of Elizabeth Siddal .
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. Manchester City Art Galleries, 1997.
102-4
Friends, Associates Anna Mary Howitt
Family biographer Carl Ray Woodring numbers AMH with a group of Pre-Raphaelite sisters, including Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon) , Bessie Rayner Parkes , and Margaret Gillies , who associated themselves with innovation in...
Textual Production Violet Hunt
The Wife of Rossetti : Her Life and Death, a biography of Elizabeth Siddal , was VH 's last publication. It was praised by many writers of the time.
Rogers, John H., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 162. Gale Research, 1996.
162: 140
Intertextuality and Influence Violet Hunt
While the topic of creative women ill-treated and abandoned by their male counterparts runs through VH 's body of work, she had become deeply interested in Siddal 's particular experiences by 1882. She was surrounded...
Reception Vernon Lee
This book lost Lee the friendship of others who had admired her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. Broken friendships included those with Oscar Wilde (refigured as the character Posthlethwaite), Jane and William Morris
Occupation Dante Gabriel Rossetti
DGR 's models as a painter included his sister Christina (whose poem An Artist's Studio offers an interesting perspective on the project of the male artist), his companion painter, poet, and eventual wife Elizabeth Siddal
Family and Intimate relationships Dante Gabriel Rossetti
There is no clear evidence that he and Siddal , who began sitting for him in the early 1850s, were lovers during the course of their early connection and lengthy engagement, but as her health...
Cultural formation Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Long after his wife 's death, DGR seemed haunted by her memory. In 1868, the year before exhuming her grave, he expressed the belief that her spirit was in a chaffinch he encountered while staying...
Friends, Associates Christina Rossetti
Around this time she became aware of her brother Dante Gabriel 's involvement with Elizabeth Siddal , although she and Siddal met only in 1854 and were never intimate friends. Close family friends of Christina...
Textual Production Christina Rossetti
According to biographer Jan Marsh , she participated vicariously in the activities of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from its inception in later 1848. Yet, as Andrew and Catherine Belsey have strenuously argued, and as the life...

Timeline

25 April 1870: Dante Gabriel Rossetti published a collection...

Writing climate item

25 April 1870

Dante Gabriel Rossetti published a collection of Poems, which included Sister Helen, Jenny, and the first part of his sonnet sequence The House of Life.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Texts

Siddal, Elizabeth. Poems and Drawings. Editors Lewis, Roger C. and Mark S. Lasner, Wombat Press, 1978.