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Elizabeth Siddal's mysterious drawing

Elizabeth Siddal, 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 taller, more indeterminate shadowy one with hands upraised, as if saying 'Here I am', or even 'Boo!'

Reconstructing Elizabeth Siddal's oeuvre has its tricky elements, despite Gabriel Rossetti's careful assembly and reproduction of all, or many, of her drawings and sketches into albums, two of which were preserved in the Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean Museums.  He also assembled as many of her watercolour works as he could, famously hanging them in his Cheyne Walk house.

The watercolours were not photographed, owing to the poor results from the monochrome prints then available from photographs.   The Haunted Wood is one such.   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.

There's no reason to doubt this - and yet it might 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'.  

They include two that can be identified with known pieces:  a Lady Clare pen & ink and a Virgin & Child.  And two that are less certain.  One was called 'Figures in a landscape', which  might be identified with the [equally mysterious] couple seated by a field gate serenaded by Oriental musicians.  

The other was entitled 'Annunciation',  which does not immediately accord with any extant composition, even though the subject is among the commonest images in the whole of Western art.
Is it possible that the Haunted Wood in fact depicts an 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?

If this were so, the inference would be that William Rossetti bought it from or after the Leyland sale, but did not agree with the ascribed title, so no Annunciation subsequently featured among the list of Siddal's works.   Certainly, other Annunciations place the episode indoors, so this would be exceptional.

But not unique.  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 any garment is exiguous) while the Angel hovers between sapling trees, arms outstretched.   This was originally owned by George Boyce. 

D G Rossetti, Annunciation 1855-8, PC

This provides a precedent for Siddal's woodland scene - or maybe her conception prompted his, which offered a possibly more plausible reason for Mary being outdoors; there could be no biblical justification for her to be wandering in a forest.  But Siddal's imagination was always stronger than her scholarship.

A few years later, Gabriel reprised the subject with  the Virgin now seated reading in a garden, as the Archangel leans over a rose-trellis to make his prophetic announcement.

D G Rossetti, Annunciation, c,1861, Fitzwilliam Museum

In the context of these works, i think Siddal's mysterious image may  well be intended for the same subject.

.r