Focus on this artwork and explore the Painting.
On 9 April 1866 Rossetti wrote to Frederick Leyland: As you continue to express a wish to have a good picture of mine, I write you word of another I have now begun, which will be one of my best.  The picture represents a lady combing her hair.  It is the same size as Palmifera – 36 x 31 inches, and will be full of material, – a landscape seen in the background.  Its color chiefly white and silver, with a great mass of golden hair.
Lady Lilith was commissioned by Leyland in early 1866 and delivered to him in early 1869 at a price of £472. 10 s.  
Two studies, dated to 1866, exist for the work, but two notebook sketches may be from an earlier date. The painting focuses on Lilith, but is meant to be a "Modern Lilith" rather than the mythological figure. She contemplates her own beauty in her hand-mirror. The painting is one of a series of Rossetti paintings of such "mirror pictures." Other painters soon followed with their own mirror pictures with narcissistic female figures, but Lady Lilith has been considered "the epitome" of the type.Rossetti's assistant, Henry Treffry Dunn, states that the final part painted was the flowery background. He and G. P. Boyce gathered large baskets of white roses from John Ruskin's garden in Denmark Hill, and returned with them to Rossetti's house in Chelsea. Dunn is thought to have later recreated Rossetti's picture of Lady Lilith in coloured chalk.Sources disagree on whether Leyland or Rossetti initiated the repainting, but the major change was the substitution of Alexa Wilding's face for Cornforth's.  The painting was returned to Rossetti in February 1872, and he completed the repainting on 2 December at Kelmscott Manor before returning it to Leyland. Alexa was born Alice Wilding and was about 27 years old at the time of the repainting.  Rossetti paid her a retainer of £1 per week for modelling. Wilding's face had earlier replaced the face in another painting Venus Verticordia. Despite Rossetti's record of serial liaisons with his models, there is little or no evidence of a romantic attachment between Wilding and Rossetti.Characteristics of the painting that are commonly noted include the overt flower symbolism, and the unreal, crowded, depthless space, perhaps best shown by the bizarre mirror that reflects both the candles in the "room" and an exterior garden scene.The white roses may indicate cold, sensuous love and reflect the tradition that roses first "blushed" or turned red upon meeting Eve. The poppy in the lower right hand corner may indicate sleep and forgetfulness and reflect the languid nature of Lilith.  Foxgloves, near the mirror, may indicate insincerity.One of Rossetti's assistants, Charles Fairfax Murray, who had created copies of his master's work claimed that some paintings later attributed to Rossetti were actually painted by his assistants. Murray claimed that the Lady Lilith in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was painted by Henry Treffry Dunn and was just "touched up" by Rossetti.
Henry Treffry Dunn Denmark Hill John Ruskin Alexa Wilding Lady Lilith Chelsea Lilith Eve Metropolitan Museum of Art Kelmscott Manor