In this exhibition Philadelphia-based figurative painter Holly Trostle Brigham investigates the life work of pre-Raphaelite artist, model, and muse Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal. Brigham’s interest in recovering women and women artists whose names have disappeared from the historic record is here focused on Siddal’s noteworthy creative output. Through the creation of an artist’s book tracing the life of Siddal, Brigham reclaims her story and re-positions her first and foremost as artist and poet. Historically recalled solely for her role as muse to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and others of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Siddal left a significant (if limited due to her early death) body of visual and written work. Brigham visually recaptures Siddal’s own creativity with this contemporary reflection on her many-sided full and dynamic life.
In addition to the book, a large watercolor of Elizabeth Siddal posing as Tennyson’s Mariana, with a pre-Raphaelite style frame will also be included. Other objects in the exhibition created in the Arts & Crafts style include as set of hand-cut, yellow slip tiles decorated with the images of Siddal’s life depicted in the book; a printed textile titled Lizzie inspired by William Morris patterns; and a screen decorated with scenes of female protagonists from Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene.
The exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum will be jointly curated by Brigham and Margaretta Frederick, Annette Woolard-Provine Curator of the Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Collection.
This exhibition was organized by the Delaware Art Museum. This organization is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.
