Nativity
Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Eleanor Siddal, Mrs Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Holborn 1829 – Chatham Place, London 1862)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1860
Materials
Graphite on paper
Measurements
190 mm (H); 185 mm (W); 535 mm (H); 380 mm (W)
Order this imageCollection
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
NT 1288033
Summary
Graphite drawing - The Virgin Mary kneeling down before baby who lies on high table, farm animals to the side. Large cream card mount.
Full description
Six drawings by Siddal of the Virgin Mary and Christ in a manger are known; Wightwick has three of these sketches in its collection. In many of Siddal's compositions female figures are shown in an interior setting, with windows onto the outside world. This may refer to the separation needed by her to create her art. Rossetti wrote in 1854 about Siddal: she 'made a design which is practicable for her to paint quietly at my room ... the subject is The Nativity, designed in a most lovely and original way.' Early Pre-Raphaelite painting was preoccupied with religious piety and drawing the Holy Family in a naturalistic manner, such as Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) and Rossetti’s Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849). A sequence of artworks depicting the life of Christ was a popular Victorian theme and Siddal may have wanted to create a sequence of the life of the Virgin Mary. This composition of the Nativity seems to have been abandoned by Siddal in favour of another stable scene, showing the Virgin Mary cradling Christ attended by an angel, which was worked up into a watercolour. Studies and sketches were created for an Annunciation, two Nativity scenes, a Madonna and Child, a Deposition and The Maries at the Sepulchre. Only two of these images were completed in watercolour: Virgin and Child and Angel and Madonna and Child- where an infant Christ stands on his mother’s knee.
Provenance
Probably Charles Fairfax Murray; by descent to his son Arthur R. Murray; purchased Sotheby's 15 February 1961, part of lot 6 (an album of drawings and sketches mostly by Elizabeth Siddal); purchased by Sir Geoffrey Mander, c.£120-170 the lot; (Sir Geoffrey Mander later sold 6 of the pictures in the purchased lot to Jeremy Maas, including Siddal's Lady of Shalott); transferred to the National Trust on the death of Rosalie Glynn Grylls, Lady Mander (1905 - 1988)
Marks and inscriptions
Good deal smaller (written in pencil)
Makers and roles
Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Eleanor Siddal, Mrs Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Holborn 1829 – Chatham Place, London 1862), artist