Hermia and Helena

Washington Allston, Hermia and Helena, before 1818, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program and made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, the Catherine Walden Myer Fund, and the National Institute, 1990.21

Gallery Label

Washington Allston said that this painting represented "the singleness and unity of friendship." He posed the two women so that they suggest one figure, and they read from a shared book. In Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena eloquently describes her friendship with Hermia in the third act: "So we grew together, / Like to a double cherry . . . / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem."

Like many Americans of his time, Allston was educated in the classics. He painted Hermia and Helena in England when the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was reviving Shakespeare's plays. A friend of Allston's, Coleridge felt that Shakespeare expressed human sentiment perfectly.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

Title

Hermia and Helena

Artist

Washington Allston

Date

before 1818

Location

Dimensions

30 3/8 x 25 1/4 in. (77.2 x 64.2 cm.)

Copyright

Credit Line

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program and made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, the Catherine Walden Myer Fund, and the National Institute

Mediums