A Golden Thread by John Melhuish Strudwick 1885

The Greek myth of the Moirai, or the Fates, shows how ancient Greeks believed a life was determined. There were three sisters, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who each had a role in determining someone’s fate. Clotho chooses when a person is born and whether they’ll live through near death experiences. Lachesis determines how long someone will live and their destiny. Atropos determines the manner of death and is the one to cut the string.

To discuss The Golden Thread, it’s important to discuss the artist, John Melhuish Strudwick, and to meaningfully discuss him, it requires going back to his mentor. Strudwick worked as an artist’s assistant to Edward Burne-Jones, a successful painter who painted classical subjects but subscribed to the growing art movement of aestheticism. The idea of aestheticism was that art was simply art and valued beauty over meaning (Edward Burne-Jones 2024).

Strudwick worked under Burne-Jones for several years and during that time, he developed his own artistic style inspired heavily by his mentor. Strudwick’s paintings often had a mythical subject, showing scenes from the bible, a painting of Mary and baby Jesus, and numerous paintings of greek divinity and mythos (Thiele, 2023). Inspired by Burne-Jones, Strudwick painted in a blend of the medieval and renaissance styles which creates an interesting contrast between the Greek subject matter, the 16th century art style, and its creation in the 19th century (John Melhuish Strudwick 2024).

The Moirai are a popular figure in mythological art, in part due to human’s fascination with life and death. The three sisters can be used in a painting to tell a story or lesson. Contrasting The Three Fates by Alexander Rothaug from 1910, it shows two different ways the same mythical figures are represented.

Rothaug has the three sisters in opposite order to Strudwick with Lachesis on the left, Atropos in the middle, and Clotho on the right. Rothaug depicts Clotho and Lachesis as beautiful maidens with red hair, blue silky dresses, and flowers in their hair. Atropos is depicted in the middle wearing all black, a gaunt bony face like a corpse, and dead flowers in her hair. Another important difference is that the thread of life is a white color, looking like common wool, while Strudwick’s painting focused heavily on the golden thread.

The depiction of the three sisters shows the perspective that Rothaug had on life and death. Lachesis decides a person’s destiny in life, what they’ll do and the life they’ll live and she’s depicted as beautiful due to the positive associations with destiny. Clotho decides when someone will be born and controls someone’s life. She is also depicted beautifully as she could decide that someone would be kind or smart. Atropos decides how someone will die and is the one to cut the thread, ending their life. She is the only sister depicted as unattractive and unsettling. The painting shows the black and white thinking that life is good and death is bad and ignores the idea that the life and fate given may be gruesome.

Citations:

John Melhuish Strudwick . Art Renewal Center. (n.d.). https://www.artrenewal.org/artists/john-melhuish-strudwick/547

Thiele Art Historian (2023, January 30). John Melhuish Strudwick. Madeleine Emerald Thiele. https://madeleineemeraldthiele.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/john-melhuish-strudwick/

Wikimedia Foundation. (2024b, July 23). Edward Burne-Jones. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Burne-Jones

Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, May 25). John Melhuish Strudwick. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Melhuish_Strudwick