В мае 1861 года Элизабет родила мёртвого ребёнка. Она впала в депрессию, начались ежедневные ссоры с Габриэлем. Вечером 10 февраля 1862 года Элизабет умышленно или случайно приняла смертельную дозу настойки опия. Ночью Габриэль вернулся домой и обнаружил её без сознания, рядом валялся пустой флакон.

  In 1862, after Elizabeth Siddal's death, Walter Knewstub went to work for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Knewstub had a humorous, easy going temperament and fitted in well to Rossetti's uncotiventional household in Cheyne Walk. Sir John Rothenstein, the artist's grandson, takes up the story:

Walking together, Rossetti and Knewstub saw a young woman whose beauty moved them deeply; they followed her home and asked her father for his permission to call again and make portraits of her. Deepty suspicious of "artists", he consented with reluctance. My grand father fell in love with her and, anxious to remove her from a bohemian circle around Rossetti (she was quickly acclaimed as one of the Pre-Raphaelite "stunners"), he married her before he could maintain her otherwise than precariously.

      The model for this sensuous, Rossettian picture was Emily Renshaw, the artists wife. Knewstub met her when he was working as an assistant to Rossetti.

       The marriage to Emily seems to have caused a breach between Knewstub and Rossetti. John Rothenstein suggests that Knewstub's sense of propriety was offended when Rossetti used her head for the semi-naked figure Venus Verticordia. In addition Knewstub's salary as Rossetti's assistant was never paid. Knewstub could probably tolerate this as an easy-going.

А вот как этот герой любовник выглядел в 1862 году (автопортреты несколько льстят оригиналу).