Elizabeth Siddal Annunciation

Elizabeth Siddal, gouache on  paper; 120 x 110mm;  s&d 1856; Wightwick Manor National Trust

This very small watercolour depicting two figures in dense woodland is now known as The Haunted Wood,  which is a fair description of the scene in which a blue-gowned female leans away from a more indeterminate shadowy figure, who stands with hands upraised, as if saying 'Here I am', or even 'Boo!'

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1287904

It is assumed to be the same work as was exhibited at the Russell Place exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite works in summer 1857,  as no.68 ‘Sketch: ‘The Haunted Tree’.   It was given to Wightwick Manor in 2001 by William Rossetti's great grand-daughter, so has a firm line of provenance,  which assumes William inherited it from Gabriel in 1882.  It is signed with initials and date  ‘E.E.S / 56’, and is labelled on the back ‘Elizabeth Rossetti (Siddall) The Haunted Wood.’

This may just link to another piece of information regarding Siddal's works.  The 1892  posthumous sale of works owned by Liverpool shipowner Frederick Leyland  includes four [lots 21-24] attributed to 'Mrs Rossetti'.   One was entitled 'Annunciation',  which does not immediately accord with any other known  composition, by Siddal

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The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies  http://jprs.apps01.yorku.ca/  is about to publish my article arguing that The Haunted Wood is indeed an albeit unusual rendering of the Annunciation, with the blue-clad Virgin startled by the unexpected appearance amid trees of the archangel, hands raised in a 'behold' gesture?

Unusual but not unique in presenting an alfresco scene.  Following his well-known Ecce Ancilla of 1850, showing the Virgin on her bed,  Gabriel Rossetti broke with pictorial convention in 1855, creating a sunlit al fresco scene of Mary paddling in a stream (or washing clothes, though no garment is visible) while the Angel hovers between sapling trees, arms outstretched.   This was originally owned by George Boyce. 

https://editions.covecollective.org/content/dante-gabriel-rossetti-annunciation-1855

This provides a precedent for Siddal's woodland scene - or maybe her conception prompted his. Neither offers a plausible reason for Mary being outdoors;  there can be no biblical justification for her to be wandering in a forest.   But for both artists, imagination was stronger than scholarship.

Both also – but Siddal most strongly -  were fascinated by subjects featuring mysterious, visionary figures, given visible form.   Spirits, phantoms, spectres, ghosts, apparitions, revenants.   Such were ever-popular in traditional tales and spooky stories, but the mid-nineteenth century witnessed an enormous spread of belief in communication with the dead, or rather, communication from the dead, via seances, dreams and self-appointed mediums.  This affected almost all parts of society, from the most to least educated. 

Rossetti’s participation in seances designed to communicate with Siddal after her death are well-known; Siddal’s interest is only once recorded, in a letter from Ruskin which commends her for giving up ‘disagreeable ghostly connections’.   

Which is only tangentially linked to the pictorial representation of angelic messengers but allows us to ponder how the Annunciation might have been conceived as an apparition manifesting itself between trees, hands raised in salutation: ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured’, says the angel in the King James text. ‘Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.’  Sounds like a divine but scary spirit, which might easily be mistaken for an alarming but benign ghost.