Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti (née Siddal)
(1829-1862), Wife of Dante Gabriel RossettiSitter in 3 portraits
Siddal's life is usually told in terms of her personal relationships, with her professional aspirations minimised. Often modelling as Shakespearean heroines for Walter Deverell, William Hunt and John Millais. By 1853 she had transitioned from model to artist and become romantically involved with her future husband Dante Rossetti. Lacking traditional training, she illustrated subjects from John Keats to William Shakespeare from her imagination. Exhibiting at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition of 1857, the poet Coventry Patmore commented that her study of a head showed '... considerable technical power...a high, pure and independent feeling'. Sadly her daughter was stillborn in 1861 and she died from an overdose in 1862.
Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti (née Siddal)
after Dante Gabriel Rossetti
photograph of drawing, albumen print, circa 1863, based on a work of mid 1850s
NPG P1273(2a)
Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti (née Siddal)
by Lewis Carroll, after Dante Gabriel Rossetti
photograph of drawing, albumen print, 8 October 1863, based on a work of circa 1860
NPG P1273(2b)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti (née Siddal)
after Dante Gabriel Rossetti
photogravure, (1853)
NPG D9348
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