Pre-Raphaelite Model and Muse

Tomorrow I will be meeting with my Muse, Belle, for the first time since we met at the first Friday Art Walk.

Today, I found my personal Grail at the Museum of History.

Jon Presco

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862) was an English artists’ model, poet and artist. She was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais (including his notable 1852 painting Ophelia) and her spouse, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She featured prominently in Rossetti’s early paintings of women.

Named Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, after her mother, ‘Lizzie’ Siddall was born on 25 July 1829, at the family’s home at 7 Charles Street, Hatton Garden. Her parents were Charles Crooke Siddall, who claimed his family descended from nobility, and Eleanor Evans, from a family of English and Welsh descent. At the time of her birth…