August 24, 2015

Ophelia's Muse - Rita Cameron


Kensington, September 2015.






Three Stars


Innocent shop girl Lizzie Siddall is destined for a life of making bonnets for wealthier girls until chance offers her a meeting with the celebrated painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was the artist behind the creation of the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” or PRB – a group of young men educated at the academy yet rebelling against its conventional teachings. Instead of emulating Raphael and his work on darkness and shadow, the PRB were all about embracing light and beauty. Rossetti applied this to not only his professional life but also its personal one, frequently entering into relationships with beautiful young models.


Lizzie, however, was different, and her relationship with Rossetti spanned years of art and love, sadness and addiction. Things were never perfect between the two, and both of them had some major personal flaws, yet they remained together. I found Cameron’s portrayal of Lizzie to be haughty and unlikeable, shockingly innocent yet perfectly willing to manipulate Rossetti in any way possible. In contrast, Rossetti was pretentious and rarely thought about the feelings of others or the consequences of his actions. He lived with Lizzie as his wife, but refused to marry her, even though his decision ruined her reputation and eventually her health. Neither of them were lovers that one should aspire to be, yet together they made incredible artwork that has lasted the test of time.


As described in the novel by the art critic John Ruskin, the PRB wanted to make art that would provoke and offend, and not be simply decorative like a pretty bonnet. As Lizzie was a maker of bonnets in her former life, with ambitions of becoming an artist in her own life, the comment was particularly hurtful. However, she soon gives up all ambition to support Rossetti, losing any self-respect she once had. After her illness, Lizzie becomes increasingly ethereal, which makes her all the more desirable to Rossetti in her weakness.


The romantic language in which Cameron writes certainly fits in with the literary time period; however, I found it a bit flowery and overdone. The setting is described clearly, and the characters seemed real. I would have liked to read more about Lizzie and Rossetti’s interactions with other members of the PRB, though – we see a bit of it, but a little more historical context might have been nice.


Lizzie relies more and more on her prescription of laudanum to get through the day, and she begins to fear she will meet the same fate as Ophelia, whom she posed as in Millais’ famous painting. Her fear was not so much dying as disappearing with no recognition offered for her contributions to the PRB. Unfortunately, her fears have more or less come true – everyone remembers Rossetti, Millais, Ruskin and their male contemporaries, and we all admire the painting of Ophelia, but I at least had never heard of Lizzie Siddall. For that, we can commend Rita Cameron for giving the artist’s muse a voice from the past, and giving readers a female perspective on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their artwork.


I received this book for free from Kensington and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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