Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #706563 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-22
• Released on: 2006-08-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 230 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This book traces the life of Lizzie Siddal, who, from her humble beginnings as a shop girl, became a central figure of the Pre-Raphaelite movement by the time she died at 32 from a self-inflicted overdose of opiates. Today, readers are used to stories of small-town hopefuls using modeling as a springboard to wider artistic success (think Marilyn Monroe or Andie MacDowell), but Siddal, Hawksley claims, was the first. As a model and then an artist in her own right, this remarkable woman crossed paths with some of Victorian England's greatest artistic luminaries, appearing in masterworks by Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and supported by Ford Madox Brown and John Ruskin. Hawksley recounts Siddal's life in exhilarating and painful detail, providing a glimpse of the internal and external forces that contributed to her self-destruction. Because direct evidence is scant-few of Siddal's letters or prose writings survive-scholars have inferred a great deal from the words of others and Siddal's own paintings. In doing so, Hawksley sometimes overreaches, coming across less like a biographer than a conjectural psycholoanalyst; on the whole, however, her work on this important figure is solid, lively and lucid. Scholars of the period will find the book of great interest, as will those wishing to learn more about women in the Victorian art world or about the Pre-Raphaelites in general.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Tall, slender, red-haired, large-eyed, and regal, the striking young woman known as Lizzie Siddal was working in a London millinery shop when she attracted the fanatic attention of painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the seven brash young artists who formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, declaring that art had "gone wrong" with the great painter Raphael. The romantic if morbid group is best remembered for Rossetti's many portraits of Lizzie, his magnificent obsession. But as Hawksley so crisply documents, for all his adoration, Rossetti was unfaithful and cruel, and Lizzie suffered chronic -anxiety-induced ailments and a wicked addiction to laudanum, dying at 32 in 1862. And still Rossetti's selfishness knew no bounds: he arranged for a ghoulish exhumation of her body to retrieve a poetry manuscript. Writing with authority, energy, and covert wit and indignation, Hawksley offers a fresh and affecting perspective on this still scandalous and tragic story. She relishes the strong personalities involved and their intriguing milieu and subtly guides readers to consider timeless questions pertaining to beauty and power, love and ambition. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Lucinda Hawksley’s sympathetic scholarship has produced a portrait of Pre-Raphaelitism’s most celebrated face which is as gripping as a romantic novel.”—A. N. Wilson

Customer Reviews

A Pre-Raphaelite "supermodel" of the times: Lizzie Siddal
I've been interested in the subject of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for quite some time, and the more books I've purchased on this subject, the more interested I've become in knowing more about the participants in this movement.

There are many books available on the "general" subject of the Pre-Raphaelites (eg: "The Essential Pre-Raphaelites" by Lucinda Hawksley), but once a reader, such as myself, has progressed to a level slightly beyond "PRB-101", that reader will want to know more about the PRB participants, such as: the models, or the relatives of the PRB Artists, or the friends of the PRB Artists (eg: Morris, Ruskin), or the architects and craft-people involved in what came afterwards (eg: the weavers,carpenters,architects,) etc.

With this in mind, first of all, I wanted to find more information on the actual models and "stunners" shown in the PRB paintings and art works (including sketches,murals, etc).

Since the "stunners" most mentioned in PRB literature were Lizzie Siddal & Janey Morris, I was excited to find this book, amongst others.


I rate this book,by Hawksley, a 4 out of 5 stars only because I wish the author had included a few more reproductions of sketches and paintings showing Lizzie Siddal herself. The reason I say this is because while reading other books on the PRB subject, I came across many other reproductions showing Lizzie from other angles & in different environments. Therefore, I know that other sketches of Lizzie are publicly available.

For example, there is a wonderful sketch of Lizzie on page 24 (called 'Lizzie plaiting her hair') in a book by Christopher Wood called "The Pre-Raphaelites". There is also a beautiful colored profile of Lizzie on page 37 called 'Portrait of Lizzie Siddall' in another book called "Pre-Raphaelites at Home" by Pamela Todd, which emphasizes Lizzie's great beauty. There are also 2 more pretty sketches of Lizzie in the same book by Todd on pages 38 and 40, that show Lizzie in a natural state, reading and standing by a window.

Aside from my need to experience Lizzie through more sketches, I found the actual information about Lizzie in this book by Hawksley very helpful and interesting. Therefore, had more sketches been included, I would have rated this book a five-star book.

In this book (by Lucinda Hawksley), the author has included information that is not normally explained in other, more "general" books on the PRB subject. For example, all the poems included and written by Lizzie, tell us so much about her state of mind and her personality , as do the poems that Dante Rossetti wrote about her,throughout their relationship.

Since most general PRB books mentioning Rossetti seem to gloss over Lizzie, (and thus, skipping to other ladies that Rossetti had emotional and physical relationships with), I feel that the author (Lucinda Haksley) did a nice job in letting the readers know how deeply Rossetti truly felt about Lizzie. I believe that this point was the author's attempt. The reader gets the strong feeling that Rossetti and Lizzie were "soul mates",until the very end.

I could then see, why Rosetti was so taken by Lizzie and shunned his friends for so long, when wanting to be alone with Lizzie, day after day, hour after hour. The reader can only imagine what Rossetti and Lizzie were up to, locked up in the various apartments together for days on end....reading, sketching, Art tutoring, and much more.

There was, thus, a reason that Rossetti chose to obsess over Lizzie (& vice versa) , and why Dante cared so much for Lizzie's health. And later on, when Dante went into a deep depression after her death, a reader can see that Lizzie was so much a main reason for Dante Rossetti's final depression.

The cover of the book was painted by Rossetti after Lizzie died, and it shows Lizzie in a state so much different than any of the happier sketches Rosetti drew of Lizzie while they were together and happier. I am glad that the author chose that famous painting (called "Beata Beatrix") as the cover because it tells us how deeply Rossetti was affected by Lizzie's death.

A well told life of the first of the Pre-Raphaelite Stunners who was much more than a model
Lizzie Siddal was the first of the stunning models the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood cultivated during the second half of the nineteenth century. She came from a family that had fallen on hard times and was working in a cramped workshop making hats at the time she was discovered. What attracted so many to her was the rare combination of pale, almost translucent skin that had varying colors showing through, a long neck, distinctive facial features, and amazing red hair. Remember, this was an age when women did not color their hair.

None of this was fashionable nor was she considered a beauty by the standards of her time. However, it is a testament to her personal charisma that she turned every one of her features into something women desired to have. The Pre-Raphaelites looked for models they called "stunners" rather than classical beauties. You notice this when you see their paintings. The models attract you, they seem amazing and beautiful, but when you look closely you aren't exactly sure why they are so much more than the sum of their features.

Lizzie soon developed a relationship with Dante Rossetti, the spiritual leader of the PRB. She was his principal muse and everyone understood they were a couple. To Lizzie's dismay, Dante was never one to follow through to marriage. And like many charismatics, Lizzie suffered from weak health. She became addicted to laudanum, a common enough Victorian problem. Rossetti was also prone to have liaisons with his other models and Lizzie's health became much worse when she was worried about his being with others. When he returned to care for her, her health returned. This was a long term pattern in their life together.

But Lizzie was more than a model. She also had artistic aspirations. Her drawing and painting was regarded highly by some. This included the influential critic and champion of Turner and the PRB, John Ruskin. Not only was he an influential critic, he was wealthy and provided funds for his favorite artists who were in need. Lizzie's abilities so impressed him that he provided her with a generous annual stipend. He even financed a trip for her and a friend to France to further her education. However, she spent most of the money in Paris where she lived well and bought expensive and fashionable clothes which she used to social advantage back in London.

Lizzie also wrote poetry that is still read today. It is very romantic, very morbid, and endlessly sad. This book contains several examples of her drawing, painting, and poetry.

In 1860, it appeared her health had failed and that she would die. Dante finally agreed to marry her and as soon as they were, her health recovered. She soon became pregnant, but shortly before she was to give birth the baby died within her and she had to deliver a stillborn full term baby. While this is not terribly uncommon, it devastated her. Her addiction became worse, her health worse, and when she became pregnant again, she finally got to the breaking point and drank an overdose of laudanum.

The suicide was covered up so she could be buried in consecrated ground and she is buried among the Rossetti family in Highgate cemetery. Dante made sure he was not buried there. While he had gone on to even greater artistic successes and many other romances, he never overcame the sadness of losing Lizzie and suffered from a touch of increasing madness as his life went on.

This is a fascinating tale of a woman that some call the first supermodel. If you want to understand what she actually looked like, please be sure to look at the pictures within the book and not the dustjacket. For some reason they used a later version of Beata Beatrix rather than the original and when you compare the versions that exist, this one from around 1880, no longer looks like Lizzie although it does retain some of her features. This version of the painting was executed more than fifteen years after her death. Rossetti had labored for years over the original and it is a stunning work. The Rossetti Archive on the web also confirms the differences between the early and late versions of this work. I have added an image of the original version for you to compare the two.

Wonderful Intro to the pre-Raphaelites
What I knew of the Pre-Raphaelite movement consisted of a really fuzzy memory of what I'd read of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poetry in my undergrad Victorian survey course. Not exactly a fount of knowledge, but I at least vaguely knew who they were. The art's identifiable, of course. It's very pretty and I've always liked it. So I went into this book with only the vaguest idea about the subject matter.

Lizzie Siddal was a girl plucked from a hat shop and turned into a supermodel. She was the love of poet/artist/Renaissance man Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a very naughty boy who liked the ladies in a big way. He loved her, it seems pretty apparent, but he spent all of their relationship promising to marry her then reneging. Not exactly honorable, but I don't really think we have all the details on that. There's not a lot of surviving correspondence, and relationships are way more complicated than anyone knows save the two principles. Dante did have the roving eye, but Lizzie had a lot of issues herself. She couldn't have been easy to live with.

Lizzie seemed inclined toward being neurotic, and more than once, when she found she wasn't getting her way she'd starve herself until Dante caved in and did whatever it was she wanted. Except marry her, at least until after she'd really almost died. Then he finally married her, she got pregnant and lost the baby, and it was a downhill slide until her eventual suicide.

It's generally well known that Rossetti buried his last book of poetry with Lizzie, declaring he'd never write again, and then several years later he thought better of that and had a friend of his retrieve the book. The legend goes that Lizzie still looked perfect and her flowing, red hair filled the coffin, but I'm thinking it wasn't nearly that pretty.

Not nearly.

Still, it's a pretty legend, hearts and flowers, let's go with it.

Lucinda Hawksley's written a very good history of the relationship between Lizzie and Dante, and if I had more time I'd explore more about the pre-Raphaelites. Until then, I'm at least content knowing more about the general subject. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic at all. It's detailed enough without going off on too many tangents.