I hated this programme with a passion for very many reasons but here I am, reblogging a picture from it. It was a treat for the eyes even if it wasn’t always accurate.

And Lizzie Siddal was pretty much the only of Rossetti’s models who was almost always drawn/painted with poker straight hair. I don’t know why she’s always portrayed with corkscrew curls.  

(Source: opheliasflame)

fallingribbons:

Elizabeth Siddal, The Lady of Shalott, pencil, pen, black ink, and sepia, 1853. This is the 4th version of the Lady of Shalott, and the only one done by a woman. It’s interesting to note what point in the story the artist chooses to depict. Here, Siddal shows her at the moment she looks out the window, echoing these lines by Tennyson:

Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Still, some critics have noted that this is the one moment in the story and poem in which the lady is in control of her own destiny; others have remarked that while most Pre-Raphaelite paintings allow us to look at women, in this drawing it is the woman who is allowed to look at the world. (via)

fallingribbons:

Sir Lancelot in the Queen’s Chamber by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1857.

Dear world,

Lizzie Siddal had straight hair. In the many pictures I have seen of her, she has straight hair. Whether photographed (!) or drawn by Rossetti, other artists or even herself, she had straight hair. I have yet to come across any pictorial evidence that suggests she had corkscrew curls.

History, get your facts right.

Thanks,

me xxx