Acrasia. 1888. Oil and gold paint on canvas; 27 3/4 x 22 1/4 inches (70.50 cm x 56.50 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Peter and Renate Nahum. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Acrasia, one of the most beautiful of Strudwick's creations, was shown at the first exhibition of the New Gallery in 1888, no. 9. The subject is taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book II. Strudwick owned a two-volume 1758 edition of this book. Acrasia was an evil sorceress who lived in the Bower of Bliss, a garden of tempting delights, and who seduced knights leading them away from their wives and families and luring them to their deaths. In Book II of Spenser's masterpiece, the valiant fairy knight Sir Guyon sets out on a quest to destroy the Bower of Bliss, thereby demonstrating the superiority of the virtue of temperance.
Peter Nahum has described the subject of Strudwick's painting:
This mesmerising work is a vision of Acrasia kneeling with her victim in the garden of the Bower of Bliss. Like the sorceress Circe who turned Ulysses's men into swine and whom Strudwick had painted two years before, Acrasia seduced men and transformed them into beasts. The defeated knight, who has succumbed to Acrasia's charms and sipped her fatal potion, lies listlessly in her arms, at her mercy. His armour is scattered with rose blossoms, his shield rests futilely in the branches, and his sword lays idle upon the ground. Beyond the bower, a lake glistens in a golden sunset. From amongst the branches of the apple trees, Acrasia's handmaidens sing a haunting melody along to the melodious chords of their lutes and harps. Music became the most important metaphor of the Aesthetic Movement, echoing the direct way in which the design and colour of paintings struck the viewer's emotions and senses. Like Whistler, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Strudwick alludes to music in his paintings throughout his career. In Acrasia the artist appeals to all the senses and inspires the imagination to explore the rich textures of the forest, the subtle perfume of roses, and the melodic voices of Acrasia's handmaids. In fading daylight, the soft delicate colour harmonies, created in the Pre-Raphaelite manner by layers of pure glazes, glow and seduce.
Nahum feels there is no doubt this work was inspired by Burne-Jones's The Briar Rose Series "in which knights in armour sleep forever within the thorny briars of an enchanted castle." Strudwick's knight closely echoes the pose of the left-hand knight in the first picture of the series, which was completed in 1870 (Nahum website).
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum felt this picture lacked both inspiration and sincerity:
The Acrasia of Mr. Strudwick has some of the affectations of the modern Mantegnesques, or, to write more particularly of this example, the followers of Carlo Crivelli, but little of the poetry and spontaneity of Mr. Stanhope's work. The heroine of Spenser's "Bowre of Blisse" sits in a fairie landscape, and her knightly captive's head lies upon her knees. To deal adequately with an ecstasy of self-abandonment would require a more powerful genius than Mr. Strudwick's, and a greater grasp of the essentials of the theme. He lost hold of the wild voluptuousness and gorgeous colouring of Spenser while fretting himself about the innumerable plaits of the Crivellian costume of Acrasia and the polishing of the knight's armour, which is, after all, impossible. The landscape has no suggestions of enchantment. [636]
The critic of The Magazine of Art praised the design of this picture: "Of those artists who follow in the footsteps of Mr. Burne-Jones, Mr. J. M. Strudwick is by far the most successful. His Acrasia is conceived in a decorative spirit, and every detail is faithfully executed. From the point of view of design this work must rank very high" (300).
Bibliography
Acrasia. Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries. Web. 28 September 2025.
Bate, Percy H. The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters, Their Associates and Successors. London: George Bell and Sons, 1899. 114.
"Current Art. The New Gallery." The Magazine of Art XI (1888): 299-301.
Kolsteren, Steven. "The Pre-Raphaelite Art of John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies I: 2 (Fall 1988): 11, no. 17.
Shaw, George Bernard. "J. M. Strudwick." The Art JournalLIII (April 1891): 101.
Spalding, Frances. Magnificent Dreams. Burne-Jones and the late Victorians. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978. 19-20.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The New Gallery." The Athenaeum No. 3160 (19 May 1888): 635-36.
Created 28 September 2025