The Rowing Boat by Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829-1862)

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The Rowing Boat

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829-1862)

Pencil on paper

6 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches, 15.8 x 18.4 cm.

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Commentary by Hilary Morgan

In 1989 this drawing was accompanied by a series of four letters between Sir John Witt and Eleanore Reichert, who was preparing a thesis on Elizabeth Siddal. Reichert links this work to Siddal's three designs for 'King Arthur in the Barge watched by Weeping Queens' because its photograph is included with these in the photographic album recording her work compiled by Rossetti after her death. The present drawing may not in fact represent an Arthurian subject, but may instead derive from the border ballads which interested both Rossetti and Siddal, and from which Siddal derived a number of her watercolours, such as 'Clerk Saunders' (1857, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.) Like the Arthurian designs the present drawing probably dates from the mid 1850s.

Provenance: Sir John and Lady Witt; Exhibited: London, Jeremy Maas Gallery, November 1962, Pre-Raphaelites and their Contempories, number 88.

Bibliography

Morgan, Hilary, and Peter Nahum. Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum, 1989. Catalogue number 25.

Last modified 27 December 2001