Desperate Romantics

Overview

Cast

• Aidan Turner as Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Rafe Spall as William Holman Hunt
• Samuel Barnett as John Everett Millais
• Sam Crane as Fred Walters
• Zoë Tapper as Effie Gray
• Amy Manson as Lizzie Siddal
• Jennie Jacques as Annie Miller
• Tom Hollander as John Ruskin
• Phil Davis as Frank Stone
• Mark Heap as Charles Dickens
• Rebecca Davies as Fanny Cornforth
• Dyfrig Morris as William Morris
• Peter Sandys-Clarke as Edward Burne-Jones
• Natalie Thomas as Jane Burden
• Poppy Lee Friar as Rose La Touche
• Samuel West as Lord Rosterley

  Episodes

Works featured

• Christ in the House of His Parents by John Everett Millais
• Ecce Ancilla Domini by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus by William Holman Hunt
• The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman Hunt

• Ophelia by John Everett Millais
• The Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt
• Found by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

• The Order of Release, 1746 by John Everett Millais
• The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt

• The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt
• Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Study of a Female Nude by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• The Lady of Shalott by Elizabeth Siddal
• Lovers Listening to Music by Elizabeth Siddal
• Autumn Leaves by John Everett Millais
• The Blind Girl by John Everett Millais
• The Ladies' Lament by Elizabeth Siddal
• The Rowing Boat by Elizabeth Siddal
• Bubbles by John Everett Millais

• Bocca Baciata by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• The Shadow of Death by William Holman Hunt
• Oxford Union murals by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones et al.

• Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Study of Guinevere for Sir Launcelot in the Queen's Chamber by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

• :File:Rossetti Annunciation.jpg|Ecce Ancilla Domini by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• :File:Leah&Rachel.jpg|Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• The Holy Family by Elizabeth Siddal

Historical accuracy

• Fred Walters is a composite character based on Frederic George Stephens, William Michael Rossetti and Walter Deverell, and functions as both narrator and audience surrogate. It was Deverell who discovered Lizzie, and Stephens, in his capacity as an art critic, who acted as the Brotherhood's publicist.
• Dickens' criticism of Christ in the House of His Parents is an extract from his original review, titled "Old Lamps for New Ones", that featured in the 15 June 1850 edition of Household Words.
• Lizzie Siddal's father did indeed claim to be descended from aristocracy, but the family was larger than depicted in the series. She had three sisters and a younger brother. Her father in fact died in 1859, before her marriage to Rossetti.
• Annie Miller was not working as a prostitute when Hunt first asked her to pose for him, but as a barmaid in Charing Cross Road at the public house frequented by the Brotherhood. Annie was not the model for The Hireling Shepherd: a farm worker, Emma Watkins, was.
• When Effie discovers a collection of erotic drawings by J. M. W. Turner amongst Ruskin's papers he claims that he is "compelled to destroy them" to protect Turner's posthumous reputation. Biographies of both Turner and Ruskin claimed that Ruskin had burned them in 1858, but this was disproved in 2005 when the sketches were discovered in a neglected archive.
• Although Lizzie Siddal did catch pneumonia during the painting of Millais' Ophelia, the Brotherhood were not forced to bribe her father to allow her to continue modelling; instead, Siddal's father wrote to Millais asking him to pay a doctor's bill to the sum of £50. According to his son, Millais settled for a lower sum.
• Millais painted The Order of Release at the Ruskins' country home in Scotland and not at their townhouse in London.
• The reason behind Ruskin's inability – or unwillingness – to consummate his marriage to Effie remains the subject of debate amongst his biographers. In 1854, Effie wrote to her father: "He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening." Ruskin's only word on the matter was in a statement to his lawyer during annulment proceedings: "It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person that completely checked it." It has been speculated that Ruskin's unfamiliarity with the realities of the female body was the reason he felt unable to make love to her, and that it was either the sight of Effie's pubic hair or menstrual blood that informed his disgust. His relationship with Rose la Touche has also led to claims that he was a paedophile, having met her at the age of ten and stating that he had loved her since their first meeting. This claim is often backed up by letters he sent to illustrator Kate Greenaway – asking her to draw children naked. However, he did not approach Rose as a potential suitor until she was seventeen.
• Key members and associates of the Brotherhood, such as Ford Madox Brown, and Rossetti's brother William and sister Christina, are conspicuous by their absence.
• The character of "Lord Rosterley" to whom Annie becomes engaged is based on Thomas Heron Jones, 7th Viscount Ranelagh, with whom she was involved.
• Contrary to the series' depiction, Rossetti had already met Burne-Jones and Morris before they became his students. While they were students at the University of Oxford, they recruited Rossetti to contribute to their Oxford and Cambridge Magazine which Morris founded in 1856 to promote their ideas.
• Rossetti's church mural is in fact his composition Sir Lancelot's Vision of the Grail for the Oxford Union building, which he worked on in collaboration with Morris and Burne-Jones. Rossetti did paint an altarpiece for Llandaff Cathedral, The Seed of David.
• The series portrays Jane Burden as a woman with an Oxfordshire accent working as a waitress in London, meeting Rossetti by chance after having already become Morris' "sweetheart". In fact Jane Burden was first noticed in her home town by Rossetti and Burne-Jones when they were working on the Oxford murals. She was visiting an Oxford theatre with her sister. They asked her to model for them, and she met Morris as a result. Morris and Jane were married in 1859, three years before Lizzie's death.
• Lizzie died from a laudanum overdose in 1862, having grown severely depressed after giving birth to a stillborn daughter. Her death was ruled accidental by the coroner, although it has been claimed she did leave a suicide note that Ford Madox Brown suggested Rossetti burn to avoid any scandal. Rossetti did not have the poems he had buried with Lizzie exhumed until 1869, when he and his agent, Charles Augustus Howell, applied to the then Home Secretary for permission. As depicted in the serial, the manuscript was retrieved in the dead of night to avoid a scandal; Rossetti, however, was not present.
• Millais shows Rosetti a sketch for Bubbles as a forthcoming work. The painting was based on Millais' grandson William Milbourne James, who was not born until 1881, and was exhibited in 1886 when the grandson was five years old.

  Reception