Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862), better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, poet, and artists' model. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean. Siddal was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais (including his notable 1852 painting Ophelia), and especially by her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Early life Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, named after her mother, was born on 25 July 1829, at the family's home at 7 Charles Street, Hatton Garden. Her parents were Charles Crooke Siddall, and Elizabeth Eleanor Evans, from a family of English and Welsh descent. She had two older siblings, Ann and Charles Robert. At the time of her birth, her father had a cutlery-making business. About 1831, the Siddalls moved to the less affluent borough of Southwark, in south London. The rest of Siddal's siblings were born in Southwark; Lydia, to whom she was particularly close; Mary, Clara, James and Henry. Siddal "received an ordinary education, conformable to her condition in life" and first "read Tennyson by finding one or two poems of his on a piece of paper" that had been wrapped around some butter. This engendered a love of poetry while young and inspired her to write her own. Pre-Raphaelite Model In 1849, while working at a millinery in Cranbourne Alley, London, Siddal made the acquaintance of Walter Deverell. Accounts differ on the circumstances of their meeting: in one account, William Allingham noticed her when he came to admire a co-worker, and then recommended her as a possible model to his friend Deverell, who was struggling with a large oil painting based on the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night. Another account has Deverell accompanying his mother to the millinery where he noticed Siddal in the back of the shop. In either case, Deverell later described Siddal as "magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, and a face of the most delicate and finished modelling ... she has grey eyes, and her hair is like dazzling copper, and shimmers with luster." Deverell subsequently employed Siddal as a model and introduced her to the Pre-Raphaelites. As with the other Pre-Raphaelites, Deverell took his inspiration directly from life rather than from an idealized classical figure. In his Twelfth Night painting, he based Orsino on himself, Feste on his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti