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| The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of young artists, poets, and models in Victorian England who launched a successful rebellion against the dogma of the artistic conventions of their day. Using fresh techniques and highly romantic subject matters for their paintings they were extremely popular by the end of the nineteenth century and are probably the most recognized school of artists in western pop-culture. Their work has been inordinately popular in the 20th century. For their subject matter the Pre-Raphaelites drew from Shakespeare, their contemporary Tennyson, ancient Greek and Roman mythology, and the Arthurian tradition, among many other sources. |
| The women who served as models for the Pre-Raphelite artists are legendary. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet, artist, and founding member of the Brotherhood, is famous for his affairs with Jane Morris and Elizabeth Siddal, into whose coffin he interred the manuscripts of his poetry, only to exhume and publish them some years later. Some of the models were prostitutes who found a life off the streets thanks to the support of the artists who painted them. Several, such as Elizabeth Siddal, became artists in their own right. Siddal, Morris, and many others were frequently painted as Ophelia and other languishing women such as Elaine of Astolat and the Lady of Shallott. |
| Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais The model in this painting is Elizabeth Siddal, who posed for it by lying in a bath tub full of water which was heated by candles. According to legend, the consumption which eventually killed her began with a cold she caught when the candles went out and the water chilled. She was purportedly too much of a professional to interrupt Millais and tell him what happened. |
| Ophelia by Arthur Hughes I believe the model for this painting is also Siddal though I may well be wrong. |
| Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Jane Morris modeled for this painting. The subject, as you may infer from the title, is the queen of the Underworld in Roman myth. Critics who do this sort of thing for a living suggest that painting Morris as Proserpine was inspired by the fact that she stayed with Rossetti for six months of the year, and spent the other six with her husband. Rossetti and Morris were having an affair and Rossetti seemingly likened her six months away from him to Proserpine's six month descent into the underworld. |
| My Sweet Rose by John William Waterhouse I believe this is also Siddal. |
