Episode #94: Cherchez La Femme, or The Woman Behind the Art--Elizabeth Siddal (Season 11, Episode 3)
There’s a phrase in the French language that goes, “Cherchez la femme.” In translation, it means “find the woman,” or “look for the woman,” and typically it’s derogatory, a phrase used as an explanation for the reasons why a man may be behaving badly. Cherchez la femme, some say, meaning that “woman troubles” are assumed to be at the core of any man’s real problems. But I like the idea of appropriating the phrase “cherchez la femme” to mean that we’re going to look for the women who made things right in art history, who bolstered and brought attention to some big-name artists.
Welcome to season 11 of ArtCurious, where we’re highlighting the lives and work of the women who supported some of the world’s favorite artists. Today, we’re getting to know Elizabeth Siddal, 19th century muse and model—and poet and an artist in her own right.
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Episode Credits:
Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Logo by Dave Rainey. Additional music by Storyblocks. Research help by Mary Beth Soya.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
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Episode Transcript
Just a brief note that today’s episode contains sensitive content involving drug overdoses and pregnancy loss. Please take care when listening if you’re sensitive to this content.
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. In ArtCurious Season 11, we’re highlighting the lives and work of the women who supported some of the world’s favorite artists. Today, we’re getting to know Elizabeth Siddal, 19th century muse and model—and poet and an artist in her own right. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
Rescuing someone from their reputation—both good and bad—isn’t always an easy task, especially when that person has been incessantly portrayed a certain way, over and over, for the better part of 150 years. But now’s as good a time as ever to celebrate Elizabeth Siddal not just for her incredible work as a model and muse, but especially as an artist and poet in her own right. Let’s get to it.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, known as Lizzie, was born on July 25, 1829, the third child of Charles Crooke Siddal and Elizabeth Eleanor Evans. At the time of her birth, the Siddal family owned a cutlery-making business in Camden, abutting London, and when Lizzie was two years old, the family relocated to South London, and its there at the family settled and where Lizzie’s other siblings were born—eight kids in total. Not terribly much is known about Lizzie’s childhood other than that she had, in the words of her future brother-in-law, William Michael Rosetti, quote, “an ordinary education, conformable to her condition in life,” unquote. Friends characterized her as quiet and reserved, conditions made more extreme by the fact that she suffered from chronic illnesses that kept her inside for long spurts of time. There are no records of her having attended school, so it’s probable that she was educated at home by her parents, and there’s a wonderful little anecdote of her falling in love with poetry when she discovered a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrapped around a stick of butter. It was a formative moment for young Lizzie and would inspire her to write her own verses.
Speaking of formative moments: a major one occurred when Elizabeth Siddal was about 20 years old. At that time, in 1849, she worked at the shop of a Mrs. Tozer, who was a dressmaker and a milliner, or hat maker. Though accounts differ as to what happened, the outcome was the same: sometime that year, Siddal made the acquaintance of Walter Deverell, an American-born British painter who was loosely associated with a group who would eventually come to define much of 19th century British art: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Now, side note—I know, we’re almost to episode 100 of ArtCurious and we’re just now getting to the Pre-Raphaelites. But hey, what can I say? Art history is vast, and even now I’m only just scratching the surface—but that just means that we’ve got so many great stories to tell ahead of us! So, the Pre-Raphaelites—though many people would later accept tenets of the group’s mission, the actual Brotherhood originally began with only three members—William Holeman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, before expanding to include six artists and one writer, all males. (By the way, it truly seems like you couldn’t be a Pre-Raphaelite without identifying yourself with all three names. Kind of like how we now refer to serial killers, but I digress.) Essentially, the brotherhood was a rebel group, kind of like the Impressionists would be in the latter part of the century: a group who fought against the traditions being extolled at the Royal Academy of Art, founded and ran, at that time, by the great portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Pre-Raphaelites found Academic art stodgy and muddy, and they, quite sassily, referred to Joshua Reynolds as “Sir Sloshula.” Most importantly, the Pre-Raphaelites loved what they viewed as the richness of early Italian Renaissance Art—art from the 15th century, full of complexity, glorious colors, and incredible detail. In contrast, the Academy favored the Classical design expressed through beauty and harmony—and to Academicians, Raphael was God, the epitome of Renaissance greatness. Not a bad thing, of course, and no disrespect on my part to Raphael, but the Pre-Raphaelites didn’t like it—not devoted enough to Realism, to brightness, and thus, they wanted to emulate the artwork from the period before Raphael painted—hence the name, Pre-Raphaelite.
While not one of the “original” members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Walter Deverell was nevertheless inspired by their philosophy and style. While we’re not entirely sure how they first met, we do know that Elizabeth Siddal caught Deverell’s eye. He later described her as, quote, “magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, and a face of the most delicate and finished modelling ... she has grey eyes, and her hair is like dazzling copper, and shimers [sic] with luster.” Unquote. Descriptions of Siddal are interesting to read, because while many admirers have described her beauty, or at least her allure, others are equally dismissive of her as plain, or even unattractive. That flowing red hair for which she was so recognized was especially at issue. Red hair at this period in history wasn’t altogether loved, considered to be a denotation of a fiery personality or even of overt eroticism—a problem in stolid Victorian England, to be sure. But what we do know is that people weren’t indifferent to Siddal’s appearance—and thus it’s not terribly surprising to learn that Walter Deverell asked Siddal to model for one of his paintings.
Coming up next, Lizzie Siddal has her first modeling job—and we’re going to get into all the details right after these quick messages. Remember that by supporting our advertisers, you keep us going! Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
The first painting that Lizzie sat for as a model is Deverell’s 1850 painting, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV, from the Shakespeare play (and act and scene) of the same name. Lizzie modeled for the character of Viola, who disguises herself in male garb to garner a position as a page to Duke Orsino—represented in the painting by Deverell himself. Nearby sits a court jester, identified in the original play as Feste—and the model for that role was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Deverell’s good friend and one of the OG members of the Brotherhood. And that’s another momentous point in Elizabeth Siddal’s life: her meeting with the man who would become her husband.
I admit that I have mixed feelings about discussing the relationship between Siddal and Rossetti, because they can be spun as one of those great love stories of the 19th century, but it also wasn’t the best partnership, and most importantly for our story today, it had some very negative effects on both Lizzie Siddal’s life and on her legacy. But it must be addressed either way.
It was through the connection to Deverell that Siddal and Rossetti were connected, as it was with many of the Pre-Raphaelites—Siddal would eventually model for works by William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, as well as acting as one of the primary models for Rossetti. And if you’ve seen one of the most famous English paintings of the 19th century, you’ve seen Lizzie Siddal: there she is, as the tragic, soon-to-be-drowned Ophelia, in Millais’s iconic 1852 painting of the doomed Hamlet heroine. As Ophelia, we see Siddal floating on her back in a verdant pond, her eyes languid and heavy, her hands outstretched and open, her right hand gently clutching a garland of wildflowers. Siddal’s signature red locks flow around her head but are barely visible in the dark waters below her. She’s gorgeous. The painting is gorgeous, so lifelike that it’s been said that botanists can identify the specific flora Millais represented here. But the tale of Siddal’s involvement in the image is almost as legendary as the work itself, which is now located at Tate Britain. As the story goes, Millais asked Siddal to float, fully dressed, in a bathtub filled with water. Painted in London’s icy wintertime, Millais placed several oil lamps underneath the tub to keep it warm for Siddal’s comfort for each of her modeling sessions, but the bath ultimately went cold, as baths are wont to do. And yet Siddal, dedicated to her job, didn’t complain—and as a result, when the oil lamps extinguished one day, Millais didn’t notice, and Siddal didn’t say anything—and she caught either pneumonia or a severe respiratory condition. This greatly angered Siddal’s father, who blamed Millais for his daughter’s illness and sent her medical bills to Millais, who did eventually shell out for some of the payment.
That Millais’s painting is so successful is owed, then, in no small part, to Elizabeth Siddal’s gameness. At the same time, though, this single work of art has had a major impact on Siddal’s story, imbuing its mystique onto Siddal herself. That story about Siddal falling ill yet powering through allows us to see her as a sufferer who bravely sacrifices her own health for the sake of Art (with a capital A)—and after Siddal’s death, allows us to romanticize her even further. But more on that in a moment.
Around the same time at Lizzie Siddal posed for Millais’s Ophelia, she began posing for Dante Gabriel Rossetti—a full two years after the pair met at Deverell’s studio. Not terribly long after, Rossetti inserts himself into Siddal’s life as the central figure in her world—not only forbidding her to model for the other pre-Raphaelites, but also claiming her as his lover, personal muse, and even his student. In 1852, Siddal ceased working at Mrs. Tozer’s millinery, and by November of that year, she has fully dedicated herself to Rossetti. Still, this period is yet another turning point for Siddal because she begins to experiment with her own artmaking. This was a huge moment for her, especially because the mid-19th century—the height of the Victorian era—wasn’t the most receptive to female artists, who were not yet accepted at the Royal Academy of Arts and other institutions of learning. In comparison, the pre-Raphaelites were an accepting bunch, allowing the women in their circle to not only make art themselves, but to help to shape and perpetuate the movement—not just Elizabeth Siddal, but also Joanna Mary Wells, Emma Sandys, and Marie Spartali Stillman, just to name a few. From Rossetti, Siddal learned the basics of drawing and design before leading up to watercolor and even a bit of oil painting, oftentimes showcasing the same themes and ideals as Rossetti and the other Pre-Raphaelites—an interest in literary references, taking inspiration from Arthurian legend and poems as diverse as the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and ancient Scottish ballads that extolled the virtues of love, fidelity, honor, and devotion. Though we can see Rossetti’s influence in Siddal’s works, it’s not without her own special touch. Elizabeth Siddal was an artist, learning her trade and getting comfortable with her talents.
Nearly three years after she began her art studies, she had improved enough in technique to garner her first patron—the famed art critic John Ruskin, who found her work so intriguing that he subsidized her career with a payment of £150 a year, the equivalent of over £12,000 today, a fee for which Lizzie was to turn over all the paintings and drawings she produced. A patron! A real patron! Truly, Siddal must have been thrilled, but so, too, must have been Rossetti, who wrote of the deal in a letter to the Irish poet William Allingham, quote, “About a week ago, Ruskin saw and bough on the spot every scrap of designs hitherto produced by Miss Siddal. He declared that they were far better than mine, or almost anyone’s, and seemed quite wild with delight at getting them…” Unquote. Rossetti may have also been wild with delight at the money Ruskin provided, as he often struggled to make ends meet.
Like most art critics, Ruskin had a lot of ideas about what Siddal should and shouldn’t do. Most of it had less to do with ways to improve her art, and extended instead to his assumptions about her health: after meeting her, Ruskin proclaimed that Siddal must have been awfully ill, perhaps even on death’s door, and his surviving letters to her, Rossetti, and even a physician friend named Henry Acland are full of his concern for poor Siddal, whom he nicknamed “Ida.” He chastises her for her interest in quote “ghostly connections,” preferring instead that she, quote, “be made to draw in a dull way sometimes, from dull things.” Unquote. Ruskin pesters her to get away, to take the air somewhere fresh—perhaps the south of France, perhaps to Hastings on England’s southern coast—and one can be sure that Siddal grew tired of his pestering. Still, she carried on—not only engaging in her own drawings and paintings but writing poetry as well, producing over 100 creative works. By 1857, she was feeling confident enough—and her works were admired enough by her fellow artists—that she was the only female artist featured in the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition that summer.
But Ruskin wasn’t wrong in worrying about Elizabeth Siddal’s health. It appears to have been a frequent topic of conversation. Barbara Leigh Smith, a fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist, wrote of her, quote, “She is a genius and will, if she lives, be a great artist.” Unquote. Her health, or lack thereof, became an easy excuse for Rossetti to continue putting off a permanent commitment to Siddal, saying that he didn’t think she was well enough to get married, nor did they have enough money. What, exactly, Elizabeth Siddal suffered from has been a matter of conjecture, but historians have bandied about everything from tuberculosis to an intestinal disorder, to neuralgia or even anorexia. What is known for sure is that she became dependent on laudanum, an opium-based tincture that left her weak and thin. Now, whether or not Siddal’s addiction to laudanum worsened with her relationship to Rossetti is another element of conjecture, but his affairs didn’t help the situation: when Siddal left London for an extended rest from late 1855 through spring 1856, Rossetti was forced to find other models for his paintings, and it’s interesting to note that he went for the opposite of Siddal. Whereas she had grown feeble and ragged, Rossetti was drawn to models who were more robust, fuller, and rather sensual: models like Fanny Cornforth and Annie Miller came into his life, and according to some sources, Rossetti and Miller had an affair, which was scandalous amongst the Pre-Raphaelites, as Miller was previously tied to William Holman Hunt. The whole situation wasn’t great, and when Siddal learned of the affair, she was furious and heartbroken—but she eventually reconciled with Rossetti later that year, and the two remained close, if somewhat strained.
The rest of Elizabeth Siddal’s story, including her legacy, is coming up next—right after this break. Come right back.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
Not a whole lot has been confirmed about Siddal’s experiences between 1858 and 1860—we do know from Rossetti’s letters that Lizzie had spells of worsening health and then slow improvement, until, in mid-1860, everyone from Rossetti to Siddal’s family became convinced that she was on death’s door—listless, she vomited practically every day, and Rosetti decided that they were at a tipping point--it was now or never. So either because of her illness, or perhaps despite it, Rossetti finally agreed to marry Elizabeth Siddal on May 23, 1860. They married in Hastings, with no family present, only two strangers as witnesses, and apparently Siddal was so ill that she couldn’t manage the five-minute walk to the church and had to be carried to the altar.
After an expensive honeymoon in France, Elizabeth Siddal—whose last name, up to this point, was spelled with two Ls, but upon her marriage to Rossetti he drops the final L, which is a curious idea--Siddal seemed to recover a bit under Rossetti’s care and with the satisfaction of finally being married, but alas, the happier times were not to last. In 1861, Siddal discovered that she was pregnant, but later that year she delivered a stillborn daughter. She was devastated, rightly so, and she fell into a deep depression, relying even more heavily on laudanum to make it through the days. Though she supposedly became pregnant again around the end of the year, that pregnancy never came to fruition, either. On the evening of February 10, 1862, Siddal and Rossetti enjoyed a dinner out with their friend, the poet and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne, after which Siddal retired at home and Rossetti headed out to attend a lecture. But when he returned later that evening, Rossetti found Siddal unresponsive. Though several doctors attended to her at her bedside, none were able to revive her, and she was pronounced dead on the morning of February 11, 1862. She was 32 years old.
Many historians assume that her death was accidental, caused by an overdose of laudanum, but of course there have been stories that deem it a suicide, with Rossetti supposedly finding a suicide note and then burning it on the advice of Ford Madox Brown to avoid scandal and shame, since suicide was not only considered immoral, but was also illegal at the time. But this is all hearsay—so ultimately there’s no evidence to suggest whether she chose to end her life.
Siddal’s early death—as well as her chronic illness, her pregnancy loss, and her suffering due to Rossetti’s infidelities— all of this colors our view of Elizabeth Siddal’s life and works. And much of this sad characterization came about in the writings that proliferated after her death. It’s so hard for us not to envision Siddal as Ophelia, lying there awaiting death, or being accidentally consumed by it. But it’s curious to note that that oft-told tale of Siddal catching cold in Millais’s bathtub, suffering for artistic greatness, wasn’t actually published until after Millais’ own death in 1896. Other popular descriptions persisted: the poet William Allingham mulled over her loss in a diary entry, writing, quote, “Short, sad, and strange her life; it must have seemed to her like a troubled dream.” Unquote. That Siddal’s life and death were mainly detailed by men in the decades after her death plays an interesting role here because they reframe her story so that it reflects less on her and more on others, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She’s extolled as the anguished model of a brilliant painter, an inspiration for both creation and love. Her greatness is revealed only in conjunction with Rossetti’s, and he is viewed as the hero in her own life.
Rossetti certainly didn’t help Siddal’s life story from morphing into that of a tragic gothic romance. After Siddal’s death, things went south for the widower. Consumed with grief, he kept Siddal’s coffin in their home for six days before finally consenting to her burial on February 17. Before her coffin was sealed, her husband laid two books next to her cheek, nestled into her copper hair: Lizzie’s Bible, and Rossetti’s own manuscript of poems, after which he melodramatically announced to his friends, quote, “I have often been writing at these poems when Lizzie was ill and suffering, and I might have been attending to her, and now they shall go.” Unquote. After that point, the story of Siddal and Rossetti distorts into something akin to a Victorian ghost story: for two years after her death, Rossetti claimed to see her ghost, with Siddal haunting him and he attempting to reach her beyond the veil via seances and table tappings. To be fair, it does appear that Rossetti—especially in the latter part of his life—did suffer from mental health issues. But friends and associates, and perhaps even Rossetti himself, ascribed this torment directly to Siddal’s passing, whether or not it is singularly responsible for his ailments. But it’s not like Rossetti just sat around being haunted after Siddal’s death. He despaired, naturally, but he also continued to paint and to write poetry, and he had several love affairs, including with models Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris.
In 1869, seven years after Elizabeth Siddal’s death, Dante Gabriel Rossetti made an interesting decision. His eyesight had begun to worsen, making painting a miserable experience, so he returned to writing poetry, which, as for Siddal, was one of his first loves. But though he had several verses written, he felt that he did not have enough to warrant publishing a volume. And then he remembered that little manuscript he buried with his wife. Hmm, he must have thought. And you might be seeing where this is going. And it is thus that, in September 1869, Rossetti received permission to have Siddal’s body exhumed. On October 5, gravediggers were able to rescue the remains of the manuscript, which Rossetti lamented as being in a, quote, “disappointing but not hopeless state.” Unquote. Still, the job was done: Rossetti supplemented his work with poems from the molded, worm-eaten manuscript, and Siddal was returned to her grave. Rossetti wasn’t present for the exhumation, by the way. It was a simple transaction, perhaps, to further his writing career.
That Elizabeth Siddal’s life and works have been overshadowed by her death isn’t a surprise: after all, think about how much has been written about the tortured lives of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, among many other creative women whose deaths came early and at their own hands. But where Siddal differs from Plath and Woolf, just as examples, is that Siddal didn’t document her own life prolifically. So few letters of hers survive, and remember that there are huge periods where we just don’t know what was happening in her life—like in that two-year gap from 1858 until 1860. So we have long understood her history only in how others have perceived her.
Thankfully, the tide has begun to change for Elizabeth Siddal, and we are now the inheritors of a new story. More attention has been paid to her works on view at the Ashmolean at Oxford University, for example. And in 2018, an exhibition called Beyond Ophelia opened at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton, England, featuring 12 works owned by the National Trust. This show was dedicated entirely to the works of Elizabeth Siddal and was only the second show in history dedicated to this artist. Her poetry is receiving more acclaim, too. Finally, the world is coming around to understanding and celebrating Elizabeth Siddal in her own right—not just for her beauty and as a muse, but to an important and influential creator herself.
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal. HUGE thanks to Mary Beth Soya for her awesome research for this episode and for almost all of our episodes this season. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Our podcast services are provided by our friends at Kaboonki. Subscribe now to their show, Subgenre, a podcast about the movies. Season 1 is available in its entirety now—please visit subgenrepodcast.com for more details. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.
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Check back with us soon as we explore the facts, and the fictions, of the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful in art history.
