The painting was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest for what would later become Tate Britain.

The Tate Britain commentary explains that the theme of Time is dealt with in two related parts: "Below, the three Fates are spinning the thread of life. Their spindles show part gold and part grey threads. The gold part will measure out the allotted span of a person's life. Above, a girl and her lover are talking. It is their happiness that is being determined by the Fates: a bell is tolling in a tower, symbolising the passing of time, and Love's car is waiting in the sky." Steven Kolsteren has also given his explanation of the meaning of the painting: "The principal figures are the Three Fates. Above them, a young woman can be seen through an open door looking at her lover through a window. Higher still, Time with this scythe patiently awaits the cutting of the thread of life, which is intimidated by the carriage with the winged horses and putti hovering over the young lovers in the sky" (6-7). The Fates were the daughters of Themis, the goddess of justice and law, and Zeus; the three sisters determined the course of human life. The youngest Clotho presided over human birth and spun the thread of Life, while Lachesis held it and fixed its length, and the eldest Atropos cut it off.

The influence of Edward Burne-Jones is even more clearly seen here than in many of Strudwick's other paintings. The Fates was one of a number of classical paintings Burne-Jones started in the 1860s. He began it in 1865, made several studies for it, and then abandoned the project temporarily. He returned to it in the early 1870s, when he made numerous pencil sketches for this subject. The painting was never carried further, however. The car of Love in the upper centre of Strudwick's picture also reveals the impact of Burne-Jones's work: his painting The Car of Love (Love's Wayfaring), now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, dates from c.1891-98 but earlier projects like The Triumph of Love (The Passing of Venus), first designed as a project for tiles for M.M.F. & Co., dates as far back as 1861.

Madelaine Emerald Thiele also feels that this work owed a great deal to the influence not only of Burne-Jones and J.R.S. Stanhope, but William Holman Hunt as well:

His Golden Thread has a clear relationship with Burne-Jones The Morning of the Resurrection (1886, Tate). It is interesting to note the Tate gives the Strudwick a date which precedes the Burne-Jones by one year (although we should bear in mind Burne-Jones' often drawn out time-lines for completing paintings). Strudwick also seems to have absorbed the sharp eye for detail which Stanhope had, and we know that side of his art was important to him; he must have been looking intently at the works by other Pre-Raphaelite artists who worked in this manner, for he often employs the same labour intensive attention to detail as that found within William Holman Hunt's works."

Contemporary Reviews of the Painting

When this painting was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885 it was surprisingly not particularly extensively reviewed considering it was given the great honour of being purchased by the Chantrey Bequest. F.G. Stephens in The Athenaeum even much preferred Strudwick's other submission that year, the Mantegna-inspired "Tuneful Strings wake Memories": "We care much less for another production of the same painter, called Golden Thread; it is a diptych, in one portion of which we have a romance of a lady and her lover in a cottage, while Time tolls the bell in a tower overhead, and Cupid waits at the door; in the other portion Hades is seen with the Fates spinning the thread which being cut, the happiness of the pair will end. The motive is puerile, and it is a pity so much care and skill were expended in reproducing archaic whims, which have no beauty of their own" (540).

A reviewer for The Illustrated London News felt Strudwick's submission was the best by Burne-Jones's acolytes: "Of the works of the more orthodox, or rigid followers of Mr. Burne-Jones, Mr. Strudwick is, perhaps, the most successful in his complicated, but delicately-painted allegory, A Golden Thread (544).

The critic of The Spectator gave the picture its most extensive, albeit somewhat mixed, review:

Look for a pleasant change, even though the work be but an echo of Burne-Jonesian melody, at Mr. Strudwick's Golden Thread, one of those variations on the melancholy woman which the weaker members of the pre-Raphaelite brethren have copied from their master. The spirit of the picture is feeble and futile, it is true; the lady wants airing and the garden air; her drapery would not let her move; her eyes would weep on the slightest provocation; she lives in a brown world, and stands in a brown study. All this may be granted freely. But what a pleasure it is to see the quietude and fineness of this work! Every little leaf has been touched with care, almost with tenderness. On each fold of the gown, or morsel of the background, the artist has left the mark of his endeavour and the energy of his hand. A little, perfect piece of imperfection; the best thing that an imitator could do, done with all that there was in him. This and the other pictures of Mr. Strudwick's have their own value, if only as showing the results of a strained theory in the hands of weaker men than those whose genius has availed to conceal the imperfection of their ideal. [611-12]

Henry Blackburn in his Grosvenor Notes described the painting, and found it "interesting for colour and poetic treatment: "In the lower part the Fates are seen spinning the thread; in the upper, a girl and her lover are talking together. There is not much more gold on the distaff, the grey is soon coming. Love's car is waiting in the air, and Time is in the tower tolling the hours away" (6).

Bibliography

"Art. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Spectator LVIII (May 9, 1885): 611-12.

Blackburn, Henry. Grosvenor Notes VIII (May 1885): 6.

Christian, John. Burne-Jones and His Followers. Tokyo: Tokyo Shimbun, 1987, cat. 41, 109-10.

A Golden Thread. Art UK. Web. 28 September 2025.

A Golden Thread. Tate. Web. 28 September 2025.

"The Grosvenor Gallery". The Illustrated London News LXXXVI (23 May 1885): 544.

Kolsteren, Steven. "The Pre-Raphaelite Art of John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies I: 2 (Fall 1988): 1-16, no. 5.

Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Grosvenor Exhibition." The Athenaeum No. 3000 (25 April 1885): 540-41.

Thiele, Madelaine Emerald. "John Melhuish Strudwick." Web. 28 September 2025. https://madeleineemeraldthiele.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/john-melhuish-strudwick/

Upstone, Robert. The Pre-Raphaelite Dream. Paintings and Drawings from the Tate Collection. London: Tate Publishing, 2003. 178-79.

Wood, Christopher. Olympian Dreamers: Victorian Classical Painters, 1860-1914. London: Constable, 1983. 197 & 201.

Created 28 September 2025