The Return of Tibullus to Delia: study for Delia

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date: c. 1853 - 55

Materials: Pencil, touched with pen and brown ink

For a watercolour conceived in 1853, Rossetti made several studies of Elizabeth Siddal in a subject taken from the Roman poet Tibullus. Long abandoned by her lover, Delia sits on a day-bed, listening to music played by an old woman, and distractedly sucking on a strand of her long hair.

The relationship of Rossetti and Siddal was at its most passionate at this date, and these are among the most sensuous of all his drawings of her. The motif of sucking at hair was also used, probably by coincidence, by Frederick Sandys in his design illustrating Christina Rossetti's poem 'If'.