Author(s): HAWKSLEY,LUCINDA

Biography

The supermodel did not arrive when Twiggy first donned false eyelashes; the concept began more than one hundred years previously, with a stunning young artists' model whose face captivated a generation. Saved from the drudgery of a working-class existence by an astute young Pre-Raphaelite artist, Lizzie Siddal rose to become one of the most famous faces in Victorian Britain and a pivotal figure of London's artistic world, until tragically ending her young life in a laudanum-soaked suicide in 1862. In the twenty-first century, even those who do not know her name always recognise her face: she is Millais' doomed Ophelia and Rossetti's beatified Beatrice. Her image haunts the viewer and has become the globally recognised incarnation of Pre-Raphaelitism. This colourful and emotionally-charged biography takes Lizzie from the background of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's life and, finally, brings her to the forefront of her own.