Moths seem to be made for Halloween. They're largely nocturnal, often outlandish in appearance and bear creepy names such as Lunar Thorn, Cloaked Carpet, Bordered Gothic and (best of all) Puss Moth.
Author
- Samuel Shaw
Senior Lecturer in History of Art, The Open University
The webs of the ermine moth caterpillar cover trees like ghostly shrouds, while the hairy caterpillars of the oak processionary moth release rash-inducing toxins .
Spookiest of all is the Death's-head Hawk-moth , which bears a skull-like mark on its thorax and can squeak like a mouse. This is the moth that appears, albeit in altered form, on the poster for the film The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Two historical prints held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam speak to the long-held suspicion of moths within European society. In one work by the printmaker C. Galle, a group sets out with lamps to destroy moths before they can eat the crops (or produce caterpillars that do). In another, by Jan Luyken, women inspect the holes that moths have made in fabric . The Old English origins of the word "moth" denote a primarily destructive, parasitical creature.
Meeting with moths
Unlike butterflies (who doesn't like butterflies?) humans have always found moths hard to love. I certainly didn't give moths much consideration until this year, when I started researching representations of moths and spending time with the moths themselves. I've since become something of a moth evangelist.
From March of this year my son and I set up a Skinner moth trap in our small suburban garden in Leicester, rising early every morning to identify the moths that visited during the night. My expectations were low, especially in the first few weeks, when we caught little. But then May and June came, and every morning brought new gifts. My son took charge of the counting and by September we had identified a hundred different species.
If you think moths are all small, brown creatures, think again. Even in the UK, and despite their rapidly decreasing numbers , moths are astonishingly diverse and outstandingly beautiful, ranging widely in size, colour and temperament. Some of them - most famously, the luminously pink and green Elephant Hawk-moth - are disarmingly cute and docile and will happily sit on your hand.
The art of moths
The magic of moths has attracted artists for centuries. A good place to start is the Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1601), whose delicate watercolour sketches of moths remain astonishingly lifelike. I especially like his depiction of the furry Hummingbird Hawk-moth : one of a few day-flying moths and one of a few species benefiting from recent rises in temperature .
Even more astonishing is the work of the pioneering German naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), who published three books detailing the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths (or what she called "summer-birds" and "moth-birds"). Merian's elegantly composed images were the first to situate moths within their wider environment, identifying which species preferred which plants.
Outside of the world of natural history, moths have tended to be given a marginal role. However, some artists have been as drawn to moths as moths are drawn to light. In 1959, for example, the Scottish artist John Maxwell (1905-1962) painted a series of colourful, abstracted moth paintings, including Night Flowers and Garden at Night (Moth) .
Moths are especially well served by contemporary artists. The Peruvian contemporary artist Lorena Solís Bravo has considered the moth through the lens of queer ecology. Their 2024 film myth, moth, mother celebrates the mystery and transformative power of moths. The Devon-based printmaker Sarah Gillespie, meanwhile, has created a series of mesmerising mezzotint prints of moths. "I wasn't looking for moths when I started drawing them around ten years ago," Gillespie has explained "they came and found me. Their numbers may be in appalling decline but for me their presence has become ever more insistent".
More recently, the artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg unveiled The Length of a Moment, three public sculptures at Oxford North , which visualise the flight of a moth interacting with the scent of a flower. Situated in an area rich with historic meadows, this artwork draws attention to diminishing moth populations and the need for better environmental management.
My favourite moth in art, however, comes courtesy of the 18th-century Indian artist Shaikh Zain al-Din. The moth that appears in his 1778 watercolour is the famous Death's-head Hawk-moth. Here, however, it lacks the sinister and spectral nature of the moth from The Silence of the Lambs. Instead Shaikh Zain al-Din gives us a moth just going about its everyday (or every night?) business.
This isn't the moth as a symbol of death, or as a muncher of clothes or crops (of the circa 2,500 species of moth found in the UK, only two actually eat clothes ). This is a moth doing what moths do well: feeding from and pollinating plants , providing food for birds and looking rather beautiful while doing so. This image is a timely reminder that moths are much less weird and way more wonderful than most people think.
Samuel Shaw has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
