Ignore for the moment the familiar but uncorroborated tale of Walter discovering Lizzie working in a milliner’s shop. It dates from the 1880s when all the witnesses were dead, whereas in 1857, Lizzie gave a different account to relatives in Sheffield.
In this, she claimed to have become acquainted with the Deverell family
as a dressmaker and to have shown her own drawings to Walter’s father, who was
principal of the government-funded School of Design in London. Through his encouragement, she met Walter and
the young members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Rossetti and
Holman
This narrative is itself untrustworthy, as it proceeds to claim that Walter proposed marriage to Siddal, and that after his death Hunt introduced her to Ruskin.
But it includes the vital detail of Lizzie’s artistic endeavours before she met the PRBs – aspirations that shaped later events. It glides over another detail, which is her initiative in presenting her work to Mr Deverell, presumably to ask his opinion.
One can’t immediately imagine what her ‘own designs’ depicted. Perhaps they illustrated poetic or biblical texts, like some of her later works. Maybe they were fashion sketches like those printed in the new weekly magazines.
One likely response would be advice to study
formally, in the female classes run under the School of Design’s aegis; aimed
at training artisans in draughtsmanship and basic design, these were
appropriate to those working in the fashion trades, or to women seeking
employment in colouring up engraved prints.
No comments:
Post a Comment