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Hermia and Helena
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
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.
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionSubjects
Credit lineHermia and Helena. before 1818. Washington Allston, born Georgetown, SC 1779-died Cambridgeport, MA 1843. Smithsonian American Art Museum, 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. CC0.
