Elizabeth Siddal

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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.
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.

Milestones

25 July 1829

ES was born, the third of seven children in her London family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago.
65

11 February 1862

ES died of a large overdose of laudanum. This was officially deemed an accident, but was likely suicide, as suggested by a note which Dante Gabriel Rossetti suppressed; she had been pregnant again, and unwell.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago.
72
Marsh, Jan. Elizabeth Siddal, 1829-1862: Pre-Raphaelite Artist. The Ruskin Gallery.
17
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1864-1870

Dante Gabriel Rossetti commemorated ES in a posthumous painting of her as Dante 's Beatrice, entitled Beata Beatrix.
Marsh, Jan. The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal. Quartet Books.
11

1866

Dante Gabriel Rossetti collected ES 's extant drawings and sketches and had them photographed and put into folios as a memorial for friends.
Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn reproduces a number of her visual works.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. Manchester City Art Galleries.
114-17
Marsh, Jan. The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal. Quartet Books.
13

Biography

Birth and Family

25 July 1829

ES was born, the third of seven children in her London family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago.
65

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