That Pre-Raphaelite Woman…

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys. Mary Magdalene. ca. 1860. - Oil on canvas — (approx. 13 1/4 x 11 in) - Private Collection (click photo for larger image)Sir John Everett Millais - Ophelia - 1851-52 - Oil on canvas, 76 x 112 cm - Tate Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829 – 1862) was an English artists' model, poet and artist—who was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her “employers” included Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais (including his notable 1852 painting, “Ophelia”) and her eventual husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In this work, you can see that there is a striking resemblance. Millais painted the landscape for this painting, beside a stream, while staying with William Holman Hunt on a farm in Surrey, in the summer and fall of 1851. The time Millais took over this painting, directly from life, enabled him to represent the flowers he required (some of which were cited by Shakespeare in “Hamlet” and some of which were included for their symbolic value), even if they did not all bloom at the same time. Following a method much used by the Pre-Raphaelites, Millais painted the figure in his London studio during the following winter. There he observed the effect of drowning, again from the life, by having Elizabeth pose in a heated bathtub, wearing an old-fashioned dress.