2026 - Spring Art Fair submission 'Ophelia - aka Lizzie Siddal'

It all started with my dear friend's 70th birthday on Sept 7th 2024. The gift I left with Jill was the offer to paint a copy of a favourite painting - it's what I love to do, I so enjoy the challenge of capturing a well known artist's masterpiece. They've done the hard work - I'm just copying!

Jill's choice came back a few weeks later ... I would like Pre-Raphaelite artist, John Millais' Ophelia ... or your version of it!

Oh my! What a gift Jill had given me!

After filling me in with some information gleaned from her art history class -

Jill mentioned how the model caught pneumonia, whilst in a bath for Millais to paint the effect of 'Ophelia' in the river. She nearly died as he was concentrating so much on painting and hadn't noticed the candles, warming the water, had gone out. What an irony this could have been, considering the scene from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' he was painting.

- I jumped deep into researching the model, Elizabeth Siddal.

I created my composition using nods to Lizzie's life in the 1850s - the time of the pre Raphaelite brotherhood & friends, including William Morris - whilst also keeping a nod to the original composition of Ophelia.

My composition ideas:

Lizzie's bullfinch replaced the robin
wooden privacy screen replaced uprooted willow tree (the hat was added as Lizzie was first discovered when she worked in a hat shop)
I wallpapered my canvas for general foliage, using wet strength tissue paper - making two different sizes to create wall depth (William Morris willow design)
bath replaced river
green carpet echoed bright grassy area
reeds replaced with vase of poppies & Laudanum bottles

Nods to Lizzie:

Wall hangings are sketches and a painting of Lizzie by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (they married)
Lizzie became an artist, a sketcher & wrote poetry - hence brushes, ink pot & book title
Lizzie & Gabriel were both addicted to Laudanum (an opium derived drug) hence the poppies & bottles tucked away
Lizzie's melancholic nature, finally led to an overdose taking her life a few months after birthing their still-born baby girl. The Rossettis were friends with pre-raphaelite Burne Jones & his wife, Georgiana Burne Jones, who noted in her diary their times together:

"We found her sitting in a low chair with the childless cradle on the floor beside her and ..she cried with a kind of soft wildness as we came in, "Hush.., you'll wake it"

hence the small chair next to the cradle with a bunch of gypsophila (commonly called 'baby's breath').

I've since found this link, which provides a good single summary, of the research I did:

https://elizabethsiddal.blogspot.com/p/elizabeth-siddal-e-lizabeth-siddal-1829.html

I painted the frame 'Trompe-l'œil' to echo the shape used for the original.

2025

I simply love all forms of art and have always been one to create.

Drawing portraits is my more regular go to - using #portraitnovember every year to sharpen my observation skills, but I also love the challenge of copying famous paintings.

This year I have been looking to develop the actual artist in me and to find my own way of expressing myself, rather than copying. It's prooving to be quite a challenge but what fun I'm having when exploring and playing with materials.

So much to learn but the biggest lesson so far is to be free of self-critism - I'm doing this for me, myself and I ... finally.

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