Three pencil on paper studies of 1854. Left to right. (a) Head study of Elizabeth Siddal, by Barbara Leigh Smith. 4 15/16 x 3 3/4 inches (12.5 x 9.5 cm). Collection of Mark Samuels Lasner. Image courtesy of University of Delaware Library Special Collections. (b) Head and torso study of Elizabeth Siddal, by Anna Mary Howitt. 5 1/16 x 4 3/8 inches (12.8 x 11.1 cm). Collection of Mark Samuels Lasner. Image courtesy of University of Delaware Library Special Collections. (c) Head study of Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 7 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches (18.7 x 12.3 cm). Collection of National Gallery of Canada, accession no. 49232. Image courtesy of the author.
Probably Barbara Leigh Smith's best-known drawing is a study of Elizabeth Siddal drawn on 8 May 1854 at Scalands farm, her family's country home near Robertsbridge on the Kent-Sussex border. The story of how Barbara's portrait drawing, and the associated ones by D.G. Rossetti and Anna Mary Howitt came about, is a fascinating one. Barbara had first been introduced to Siddal through Howitt, who was friends with members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle and Rossetti in particular. Anna had met Lizzie earlier in 1854 when she and her mother had come to call on Rossetti at his studio at Chatham Place. The Howitts became concerned about Lizzie's medical condition and arranged for her to be examined by their friend, the homeopathic doctor Garth Wilkinson. Wilkinson ruled out consumption as the cause of Lizzie's physical symptoms and instead diagnosed curvature of the spine (Daly 49). Wilkinson recommended a long period of rest with no painting and, although hospitalization was recommended, it was declined by Siddal.
Barbara suggested Hastings as a suitable location for Lizzie's recuperation. At Hastings she would have the benefit of the sea air and the probability of more sunshine than most places in the south of England. As early as 1842 the physician James Mackness had published a volume on the climate of Hastings as a potential "curative agent" for respiratory conditions. Lizzie would also be away from the unhealthy atmosphere of Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, at a time when a cholera epidemic was raging in London during the summer of 1854. In order to further her scheme Barbara wrote to her friend, the poet and fellow feminist Bessie Rayner Parkes, who was staying at nearby Scalands farm:
Private now my dear. I have got a strong interest in a young girl formerly model to Millais and Dante Rossetti, now Rossetti's love and pupil, she is a genius and will (if she lives) be a great artist, her gift discovered by a strange accident such as rarely befalls woman. Alas! Her life has been hard and full of trials, her home unhappy and her whole fate hard. Rossetti has been an honourable friend to her and I do not doubt if circumstances were favourable would marry her. She is of course under a ban having been a model (tho' only to 2 PRB's) ergo do not mention it to anyone. Dante R told me all about her secret then, now you are to know because you are to help. She Miss Siddal is going down to Hastings on Saturday for her health. Will you give her tea on Saturday and will you dear see if the room Venus had by St. Clement's Church is to let. If not to let, will you ask Mrs. Elphick where there is a room with sun and a good woman etc. and for a few shillings a week, say 7 or 8s. or less if possible. It must be big enough to do for eating and drawing and sleeping. [qtd. in Daly 51]
Parkes obtained a suitable room at Mrs. Elphick's and it was arranged that Rossetti would bring Lizzie down from London by train. Mrs. Elphick's home at 5 High Street, Hasting was next to Barbara's own family home there. The day prior to their departure Barbara wrote again to Bessie Parkes telling her that "I think Miss S. is a genius and very beautiful and although she is not a lady her mind is poetic and that D. Rossetti sympathises with and does not much consider the 1st. He wishes her to see Ladies and it seems to me the only way to keep her self esteem from sinking. I do not think she will recover and perhaps this prevents one from thinking much about the future for them. The present is all we have – do not let us or them cast it away" (qtd. in Hirsch 50).
Bessie dutifully arranged for tea to be served the day the lovers arrived on 22 April 1854. Bessie also promised that she, Barbara, and Anna Mary would keep an eye on Lizzie and let Rossetti know if her condition worsened. In her journal Bessie has described her first meeting with the couple. "Dante Rossetti brought Miss Siddal down on Saturday. Together they form the most touching group I ever saw in my life. He is a slim Italian; English born & bred, but a son of Italy on both sides of the house – short dark hair, lighter eyes, a little moustache & a beard; very gentlemanly, even tender in manner; with a sweet mellow voice – she the tallest, slenderest creature, habited in pale lilac; with masses of red auburn hair looped up in a wild picturesque fashion – every line of her in spiritual grace, but I fear there is no hope for her, she seems to me in an early but hopeless stage of consumption" (qtd. in Hirsch 51).
Gabriel returned to London because his father was seriously ill and within a few days Gabriele Rossetti died on 24 April. During the time Gabriel was helping with funeral arrangements he received a letter from Barbara telling him Lizzie appeared to be very ill, but was still refusing to go to an infirmary. After the funeral for his father on 3 May Rossetti therefore returned to Hastings and booked lodgings initially at an inn. He was relieved to find Lizzie was not nearly as sick as Barbara had intimated. On 7 May he wrote to his mother "I found Lizzie apparently rather better than otherwise – at any rate not worse, either by her own account or by appearances. Some of her bad symptoms are certainly abating, and her spirits she says are much better" (Rossetti, letter 54.41, 342). Barbara, however, still felt Lizzie was gravely ill. In a letter to Bessie Parkes she wrote "R. and Miss S were sitting on the top of the East Cliff so happy and cheerful that one could hardly believe anything of gloom or any form of death could be near yet I still believe she is going fast - Rossetti is like a child, he cannot believe she is in danger" (qtd. Hirsch 52). Gabriel wrote to Bessie to reassure the group about Lizzie: "if anything she seems to me a little better. I have known her several years, and always in a state hardly less variable than now; and I can understand that those who have not had so long a knowledge of her, would naturally be more liable to sudden alarm on her account than I am" (letter 54.43, 345).
Gabriel and Lizzie appeared to enjoy their time together in Hastings. On 7 May he rented a room in the same house as Lizzie and in a letter to his mother wrote: "No one thinks it at all odd my going into the Gug's room to sit there, and Barbara Smith said to the landlady how unadvisable it would be for her to sit with me in a room without fire" (letter 54.41, 342). The lovers also enjoyed going for walks which Gabriel noted "did not seem to fatigue Lizzy much" (letter 54.41, 343).
The three upper middle-class ladies - Smith, Howitt, and Parkes - seem to have been very kind to the working-class invalid. In a letter of 7 May Rossetti tells his mother: "There are several other ladies who have been most attentive to Lizzie and every one adores the dear" (letter 54.41, 343). On Monday 8 May Lizzie was feeling strong enough to make the twenty-mile journey to visit Smith and Howitt at Scalands. The visit appears to have been initiated by Siddal, but she may have been responding to a previous invitation from Smith. On 4 May Lizzie had written to Barbara: "I thank you most heartily for your kind concern and would at once decide about going into Hospital if I thought that the state of my health was bad enough to warrant my entrance into one. You will I am sure be very glad to hear that I have felt very much better this week. I can feel myself getting quite strong. This morning I received a letter from Rossetti who will be here tomorrow or Friday. Shall we come over and see you and Miss Howitt? I should like to see her before she leaves this part of the world" (qtd in Marsh and Gerrish Nunn 103). In an undated letter from Barbara to Bessie about Lizzie's visit she writes "now I know that is not prudent but she is doing every day as imprudent things therefore I shall not say: you must not go" (qtd. in Marsh 169).
This visit on 8 May appears to have been the first of several trips to Scalands farm and it was on this first visit that the three artists made their drawings of Lizzie. The three studies are all in profile to the right, with irises in Lizzie's hair. Rossetti, in a letter of 23 May to Ford Madox Brown, wrote:
Lizzy, poor dear, continues on the whole much the same. I have been here rather more than a fortnight, and shall now be returning for a short time to London, leaving her here till I can come again. She is looking lovelier than ever, but is very weak though not so much as one might expect. She has walked a good deal till the last day or two, when we have been working. She has spent two very pleasant days at Barbara Smith's farm some miles from here, and just while I write a letter reaches me asking us to go down again to-day, but I do not suppose we shall as it is wet. Everyone adores and reveres Lizzy. B.S., Miss Howitt, and I made sketches of her dear head with iris stuck in her dear hair the other day, and we all wrote up our monograms on the panel of the window, in memorial of the very pleasant day we spent at the farm. [letter 54.49, 353-54].
According to Marsh and Gerrish Nunn the use of "natural ornament" to decorate Lizzie's hair reflected contemporary fashion (105). In Rossetti's drawing the leaves of the iris plants can be seen crossing in the centre of her hair above her forehead. Whether iris was chosen because of its ready availability or whether because of some symbolic meaning in the language of flowers is unknown. This series of three drawings of the one model by three different artists, all slightly different from one another, is unique in the history of Pre-Raphaelitism. The drawings, from three different perspectives, reveal different aspects of the sitter's personality (Oberoi 141). For many years they remained in the collection of Barbara Bodichon. All three were finally reunited at The Rossettis exhibition held at the Delaware Art Museum in 2023.
Bibliography
Daly, Gay. Pre-Raphaelites in Love. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989.
Hirsch, Pam. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Radical. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998.
Lanigan, Dennis T. Beauty's Awakening. Drawings by the Pre-Raphaelites and Their Contemporaries from the Lanigan Collection. Edited by Sonia Delre, Ottawa: National Gallery of Canda, 2015, cat. 56, 140-41.
Marsh, Jan. The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal. London: Quartet Books, 1989.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. Manchester: Manchester Cities Art Gallery, 1997, cat. no. 2, 105 and cat. 5, 105.
Oberoi, Gursimran. "The Collective Self-Portrait: Drawing Elizabeth Siddal in the New Woman Sisterhood." The Rossettis. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 2023, 141.
Ridd, Jenny. A Destiny Defined: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal in Hastings. Hastings: Edgerton Publishing Services, 2008.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Formative Years I, 1834-54. Ed. William E. Fredeman, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002.
Created 3 February 2025