British Pre-Raphaelite Artist , 1829-1862 was a British artists' model, poet and artist who was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Siddal was perhaps the most important model to sit for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas about feminine beauty were profoundly influenced by her, or rather she personified those ideals. She was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's model par excellence; almost all of his early paintings of women are portraits of her. She was also painted by Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was the model for Millais' well known Ophelia (1852). Named Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, after her mother, Lizzie was born on 25 July, 1829, at the family??s home at 7 Charles Street, Hatton Garden. She was born to Charles Siddall and Eleanor Evans, a family of English and Welsh descent. At the time of Lizzie??s birth, her parents were not poverty stricken. Her father had his own cutlery-making business. Around 1831, the Siddall family moved to the borough of Southwark, in south London, a less salubrious area than Hatton Garden. It was in Southwark that the rest of Lizzie??s siblings were born: Lydia, to whom Lizzie was particularly close, Mary, Clara, James and Henry. Although there is no record of her having attended school, Lizzie was able to read and write, presumably having been taught by her parents. She developed a love of poetry at a young age, after discovering a poem by Tennyson on a scrap of newspaper that had been used to wrap a pat of butter. This discovery was one of Lizzie??s inspirations to start writing her own poetry. Model for the Pre-Raphaelites Siddal, whose name was originally spelt 'Siddall' (it was Rossetti who dropped the second 'l') was first noticed by Deverell in 1849, while she was working as a milliner in Cranbourne Alley, London. She was the daughter of Charles Crooke Siddall, a cutler who claimed that his family descended from nobility, and his wife Elizabeth Eleanor Evans Siddall. Neither she nor her family had any artistic aspirations or interests. She was employed as a model by Deverell and through him was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelites. The twenty-year-old with her tall thin frame and copper hair was the first of the Pre-Raphaelite stunners. William Michael Rossetti, her brother-in-law, described her as "a most beautiful creature with an air between dignity and sweetness with something that exceeded modest self-respect and partook of disdainful reserve; tall, finely-formed with a lofty neck and regular yet somewhat uncommon features, greenish-blue unsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliant complexion and a lavish heavy wealth of coppery golden hair.  Related Paintings of Elizabeth Siddal :. | Im terkischen Basar | Life in t he Country (mk08) | Elizabeth at the Piano | Death of Cleopatra | Ralph Dusenberry |
Related Artists:
Pierre Subleyras
1699-1749 French painter, draughtsman and printmaker, active in Italy. He was one of the foremost French painters of portraits and religious compositions of the first half of the 18th century. From 1728 he lived in Rome, first as a student and then as an independent master working principally for the religious orders.
FOUQUET, Jean
French Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1420-1477
Wyke Bayliss
(October 21, 1835, Madeley, Shropshire - April 5, 1906, London) was a British painter, author and poet. He almost exclusively painted interiors of British and European churches and cathedrals, and was known in the late Victorian era as an academic authority on art. From the start of his career Bayliss' main interest was in depicting architecture, finding "infinite charm" in the "infinite variety of the aspect of a Cathedral interior". His unusual first name was his mother Anne's maiden surname. His brother William Wyke Bayliss became a vicar and sister Elizabeth Anne Bayliss married a vicar, whilst a second sister Mary died as a teenager. Bayliss' wider family consisted of a number of luminaries. His great uncle was Thomas Turner, founder of the Caughley porcelain factory, a major leader in the development of the Willow pattern. Bayliss owned a portrait of Turner by Sir Joshua Reynolds as well as a number of further family portraits by Lemuel Francis Abbott . His second cousin was Sir William Maddock Bayliss. Cologne Cathedral, pen and watercolourHis father, Rev. John Cox Bayliss was a railway engineer who taught military and mathematical drawing, and was also an artist known for his work "Views of Shropshire" published in 1839 . He gave his younger son training after he showed drawing aptitude at an early age. The family moved from Madeley to London following a job offer too good to refuse, giving Bayliss the opportunity to immerse himself in the emerging art scene of the early Victorian period. As a young student at the Royal Academy and the School of Design he became affiliated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and he counted amongst his friends John Millais, Frederic Leighton, William Holman Hunt and Edward Burne-Jones While distant from the Pre-Raphaelites in subject and technique, his paintings often reflect the juxtaposition of detail and colour that characterise much of Millais' and Leighton's work. Frederick Wedmore states in the foreword to Bayliss' autobiography "On reflection it will be seen that Wyke Bayliss had his speciality pretty well to himself. He was the inventor of his own genre - as well as his own method" . Bayliss paintings are held in many smaller UK and European collections, including the Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport (Evening: Amiens Cathedral) and the Welsh national collection.