Oh, and while telling family tales, on my mum's side my gt,gt,gt,gt aunt was Lizzie Siddall, Rossetti's wife/muse and model for Ophelia, Beata Beatrix, Light of the World, etc. My grandmother had the long red hair...I found this out when my grandmother's sister, who we'd never met before, came to stay when I was twelve. She was in her eighties, dressed in black, had lost her groom in the first world war. Because I was unusually good at art, she told me that I had an 'uncle' and 'aunt' who were artists, that her mother used to tell her about them and they'd lived off the Old Kent Road. She said Lizzie was buried in Highgate. My great aunt must have been born about the time Rossetti died, so all in living memory.
Becky Bell ● 5806d