Yet in spite of his skill Van Dyck was disliked by most painters. They lounged around the taverns in ragged clothes, put on boorish manners, and made fun of any kind of refinement. To this behavior he was entirely opposed. They called him the “Cavalier Painter” because he saw only the noble side of life, and ignored what was low or common. One could hardly have been found who was better fitted by nature to live and paint among the light-hearted courtiers of Charles I. He welcomed an offer from England, and left Antwerp to make his home thereafter on foreign soil. When he married Maria Ruthven, Van Dyck was forty years old. He painted some portraits of her; but not many, for his death was near at hand. A journey to Paris, in the hope of receiving important commissions there, failed in its object, and brought on a severe attack of the disease from which he had been suffering for years. The painter returned to England. King Charles offered his physician three hundred pounds if he could save Van Dyck’s life; but to no purpose. He died the second year after his marriage, one of the greatest portrait painters that ever lived. To his wife he left a considerable fortune, which he had managed to save in spite of an extravagant life. Maria afterward married Sir Richard Pryse, a Welsh baronet. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, NO. 28, SERIAL NO. 28 [Illustration: THE BLESSED DAMOSEL. BY ROSSETTI PAINTED FROM ELIZABETH SIDDAL] _THE WIFE IN ART_ _Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal_ SIX One day when Rossetti was painting in his studio, Deverell, a fellow artist, rushed in and exclaimed that he had found the ideal woman. She was working in a milliner’s shop, he said; but she was a wonderful girl of stately dignity, with blue-green eyes and coppery tinted hair. This girl was Elizabeth Siddal, and from that time on she was the model for Rossetti’s mystical dreams in color. She later became his wife. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in England in 1828, the son of an Italian refugee. His parents lived simply, almost in poverty, but with refinement suited to the fostering of art and poetry in their children. The mother believed that one good picture on a plain wall was more beautiful than many worthless decorations. Rossetti used this simplicity in his paintings. He and a number of other artists formed the Preraphaelite Brotherhood. This was an organization that took a love of simplicity as its motto, and believed in using simplicity in everything. Besides being an artist of great genius, Rossetti was a poet. He and his sister Christina were the leaders in the Preraphaelite movement in poetry. Before he was nineteen he wrote “The Blessed Damozel,” a poem that expressed his ideal in womanhood. Elizabeth Siddal proved to be his ideal woman. Ruskin spoke of her as a “noble, glorious creature.” Later the artist painted a picture to go with the poem, and his model was Elizabeth Siddal.