July 25, 1829 – Birth of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (born at Charles Street, Hatton Garden)
1831 – Siddall family moves from Hatton Garden to Southwark (in South London)
1833 – Lizzie’s father, Charles, runs a business from his home at 8 Kent Place. This is the home they rented from James Greenacre, who would later commit murder. Here’s another post about Lizzie’s early years.
1849 – Lizzie works at Mrs. Tozer’s hat shop and is “discovered” by Walter Deverell, who paints her as Viola in his painting Twelfth Night. Lizzie is propelled into the world of Pre-Raphaelite art.
1849-50 – Rossetti’s portrait Rossovestita (possibly of Lizzie) is exhibited.
1852 – Lizzie famously models for Millais’ Ophelia. Also in this year, her brother Charles dies. Lizzie models for Holman Hunt again (for the hair of Jesus in The Light of the World). It also seems that it is some time time this year that Rossetti decides that he does not want Lizzie to model for any other artist. Lizzie officially stops working for Mrs. Tozer. 1852 is the first recorded mention of Lizzie’s ill health.
Nov. 1852 – Rossetti moves to 14 Chatham Place in Blackfriars, London and takes Lizzie on as a pupil.
March 28, 1854 – Rossetti introduces Lizzie to his sister Christina. By this time, according to Lucinda Hawksley’s book, their friends had recognized them as a couple for two years.
1854 – Supposedly, this is the year Lizzie’s poem Fragment of a Ballad was written. Deverell dies in 1854. Anna Mary Howitt and her sister persuade Lizzie to see a doctor (Dr. Wilkinson) for her health. Also that year, Lizzie travels to Hastings for her health (encouraged by Barbara Leigh Smith). Rossetti’s father dies. Instead of staying with his family, he joins Lizzie in Hastings as soon as the funeral is over. Also this year, Lizzie starts her illustration of Clerk Saunders.
1854 continued – After returning to Chatham Place, Lizzie starts an illustration for Rossetti’s poem Sister Helen. She continues in her studies as Rossetti’s pupil, as well as being his lover and muse.
1855 – Art critic John Ruskin purchases all of Lizzie’s works. Rossetti wrote about it in a letter to William Allingham:
About a week ago, Ruskin saw and bought on the spot every scrap of designs hitherto produced by Miss Siddal. He declared that they were far better than mine, or almost anyone’s, and seemed quite wild with delight at getting them. . . .
Ruskin later becomes her patron. Also in 1855, Lizzie finally meets Rossetti’s mother. Ruskin sends Lizzie to see Dr. Henry Wentworth Ackland in Oxford on May 21, 1855. Ruskin also finances a trip to France for Lizzie’s health. While in Paris, Rossetti joins her there (against Ruskin’s wishes). Rossetti introduced her to Robert Browning, who was also in Paris, but the meeting did not go well. Lizzie then travels to Nice, but had spent all of her money. She wrote to Rossetti, who had returned home. He quickly painted his triptych, Paolo and Francesca de Rimini, and sold it to Ruskin in order to bring Lizzie the money. It is during Lizzie’s travels that Rossetti, left home alone, met William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Also during this time Lizzie exhibited her work in Charlotte Street.
1856 – Sept. 8, 1856 Ford Madox Brown records in his diary that Rossetti has given up Annie Miller and is committed to Lizzie and “he and Guggum seem on the best of terms now.” (source: Lucinda Hawksley’s book) Rossetti and Siddal are named as godparents to Madox Brown’s new baby Arthur Gabriel. In November Rossetti announces plans to marry Lizzie, but later changes his mind. A furious Lizzie leaves Rossetti, fleeing to Bath with her sister Clara. She refuses to see DGR, but he joins her there in December and they are reconciled.
1857 – Several of Lizzie’s paintings and illustrations appear in the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition in Fitzroy Square, Marylebone. Lizzie was the only female artist. An American from Massachusetts purchased Lizzie’s painting Clerk Saunders.
Lizzie stops taking her allowance from Ruskin.
Lizzie travels to Matlock, Derbyshire and later travels to Sheffield. She attends the Sheffield School of Art. During this time Rossetti is in Oxford, along with William Morris , Edward Burne-Jones and others painting murals for the Oxford Union.
1857-58 (?) – Rossetti rushes to Matlock when he hears she is seriously ill. He continues to travel back and forth for several months.
1860 – Lizzie is extremely ill; Rossetti is convinced she will die soon. On May 23, 1860 Lizzie was well enough to make it to the church and she and Rossetti are married (in Hastings). They honeymoon in France.
Soon (I’m not sure of the date) Lizzie is pregnant.
October 1860 they move into Chatham Place permanently. Lizzie writes the poem “At Last” during her pregnancy.
May 2, 1861 – Lizzie delivers a stillborn daughter. Lizzie continues to suffer with laudanum addiction and now postpartum depression.
Sometime toward the end of 1861, Lizzie is pregnant again.
February 1862 – Lizzie goes out to dinner with Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, returning home around 8:00. Rossetti leaves for the Working Men’s College. He returns home at 11:30 and cannot revive Lizzie. Help is summoned. Rossetti, unwilling to believe that she can not be saved, has four different doctors summoned. Each of them try and fail to revive her.
Lizzie dies at 7:20 in the morning, February 11, 1862. Her funeral is held on February 17th.
There is an interesting discussion about the night of Lizzie’s death in the post Answering Questions: Lizzie’s Death.
You can read the transcript of the inquest here with follow-up comments here.
1869 – Rossetti has Lizzie’s grave exhumed in order to retrieve the manuscript of poems that he had buried with her.
While working in a millinery shop, Lizzie was discovered by the artist Walter Deverell who painted her as Viola in his depiction of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Lizzie went on to model for other Pre-Raphaelite artists and is most commonly recognized as Ophelia in the painting by John Everett Millais, but it was the charismatic Dante Gabriel Rossetti who not only drew and painted her obsessively, but encouraged Lizzie in her own artwork and poetry. Their relationship was intense and rocky, with an informal engagement that lasted on and off for a decade. Sadly, their marriage was short. The couple suffered a stillborn daughter and Lizzie was seriously addicted to Laudanum. She died in 1862 due to an overdose. The rest of Lizzie’s tale is eerily famous for its gothic Victorian morbidity: Rossetti, in his grief, buried his only manuscript of his poems with Lizzie. The poems, nestled in her coffin next her famous copper hair, haunted him. Seven years later, he had her coffin exhumed in order to retrieve the poems for publication. The story was spread that Lizzie was still in beautiful, pristine condition and that her flaming hair had continued to grow after death, filling the coffin. This, of course, is a biological impossibility. Cellular growth does not occur after death, but the tale has added to Lizzie’s legend and continues to capture the interest of Pre-Raphaelite and Lizzie Siddal enthusiasts.
, “I want to stress that in her career she was undoubtedly assisted by Gabriel who, whatever his faults, was unselfish in encouraging others and did much to help and sustain Lizzie. If anything he was too encouraging, too lavish in his praise, too ready to persuade her to paint before she had learnt to draw, for example….But if Gabriel’s support was invaluable it was also reciprocated, for she helped him to produce some of his finest work, as Ruskin (if few others) recognized.”
