Study for the Nativity

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1834-1862)

circa 1854

Pen and ink on paper

4 9/16 x 8 inches, 11.5 x 20.3 cm.

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In the spring of 1854, while staying in Hastings for her health, Elizabeth Siddal made several studies of a teenage gipsy-looking girl with a baby sister. In July, on her return to London, she made a narrow vertical watercolour ofa nativity (Ashmolean Museum Oxford). This seems to have been the first time she treated this subject, of which she produced a further watercolour (Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington). The present drawing is distinct in composition from both these finished watercolours but was probably made at around the same time. — Hilary Morgan

References

Marsh, Jan. Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. London: Quartette, 1985.

Morgan, Hilary, and Peter Nahum. Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum, 1989. Catalogue number 22.

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Last modified 27 December 2001