Study for "La Belle Dame sans Merci"

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1834-1862)

Pencil on cream paper

15.20 cm h x 10.20 cm w (5 3/4 in h x 4 in w)

Inscribed on the reverse in pencil in William Michael Rossetti's handwriting "By Lizzie R Belle Dame sans Merci?"

Peter Nahum Ltd, London has most generously given its permission to use in the Victorian Web information, images, and text from its catalogues. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with Peter Nahum Ltd. Readers should consult the website of Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries to obtain information about recent exhibitions and to order their catalogues. [GPL]

Commentary by Peter Nahum

Lizzie Siddal became a regular model for the Pre-Raphaelites after she was introduced to their fellow artist Walter Howell Deverall in 1849. She sat for Viola in his Royal Academy exhibit Twelfth Night and subsequently to Holman Hunt, Rossetti and most famously for Millais' Ophelia (1852). She became a regular model to Rossetti who, upon realising that she herself was exceptionally talented, referred to her as his 'pupil' in a letter to Christina Rossetti.(1) By 1854, Rossetti and Lizzie were engaged in secret, the beginning of a besotted and tempestuous relationship, cut short tragically two years after their marriage in 1860 by Lizzie's fatal laudanum overdose.

The early years of Lizzie and Rossetti's relationship, nevertheless seem to be filled with optimism. His friend Barbara Leigh Smith wrote to the poet Bessie Parkes: "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" (May 1854, in Parkes Papers, Girton College, Cambridge). The two would use each other as models and Rossetti encouraged her to use the freedom of her imagination. Furthermore, Ruskin became an enthusiastic patron of her works and all this gave her the confidence to attempt more ambitious subjects and compositions, such as from "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and other Romantic poetry. On 23rd January 1855, Dante Gabriel Rossetti told William Allingham how his good pupil . . . progresses always as an artist. She is now doing watercolours (from 'We are Seven' and 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'). (Letters, I, 240). [Online catalogue for the exhibition Master Drawings at The London Original Print Fair 2006: 22nd to 26th March 2006.]

References

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

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Ed. Oswald Doughty. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP. 1965.

---

Last modified 27 December 2001