Achelous and Hercules

Achelous and Hercules is a 1947 mural painting by Thomas Hart Benton. It depicts a bluejeans-wearing Heracles (Roman Hercules)wrestling with the horns of a bull, a shape the river god Achelous was able to assume. The myth was one of the explanations offered by Greco-Roman mythology for the origin of the cornucopia, a symbol of agricultural abundance. Benton sets the scene during harvest time in the U.S. Midwest.

The mural was formerly displayed at a department store in Kansas City, Missouri, and is now in the collections of the Smithsonian. It was the first of Benton's paintings on a river-related theme.

Achelous and Heracles is displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on the second floor of the north wing. The painting was executed in egg tempera and oil on canvas, and affixed to a plywood panel measuring 62⅞ by 264⅛ inches (159.6 by 671 cm). Elizabeth Broun, director of the art museum, has described it as "raucous, gaudy, vibrant ... full of surging shapes and churning rhythms."

The central figure is the muscular, shirtless "Hercules" grappling with the horns of the bull. A second man, also wearing bluejeans and no shirt, stands by the bull's haunch and holds the end of a rope that swirls into another man's hand in the foreground, where the work of woodchopping has been interrupted. The bull's tail points into the surging, wavelike woods that rise out of the distance; a barn and silo emerge from the woods to the right. The undulating line of the rope and tail visually connect the woodlands and the timber produced from it.

The right half of the panel is dominated by a giant bounty-producing cornucopia on which a dark-haired woman reclines, leaning on her elbow with her eyes closed. Above her, a standing blonde with a less voluptuous figure holds aloft a wind-blown piece of red drapery, extending her right hand to offer a laurel wreath in mid-air. This section of the mural brings together two communicative gestures: the presentation of the wreath, and the salutation of a mule-mounted rider in the background who raises his hat in greeting or jubilation.

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