Helena and Hermia

Painted in 1901 and held by the Art Gallery of South Australia, this canvas draws on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, specifically the friendship and rivalry between the two Athenian girls who become entangled in the fairy-wood's confusions. The subject offered Poynter a respectable literary anchor for the depiction of two female figures in an outdoor classical or semi-classical setting, a compositional type he had developed over decades. Shakespearean subjects remained prestigious in British painting throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods, maintaining their appeal even as purely classical subjects fell from favor. By 1901 Poynter was in his late sixties and President of the Royal Academy, and this canvas shows the practiced fluency of long experience applied to a relatively intimate scale. The acquisition by an Australian state gallery reflects the broad circulation of British academic painting through colonial and dominion institutions, which built their collections heavily from Royal Academy exhibitions.

Poynter arranges the two figures in a balanced but not symmetrical composition, their contrasting poses suggesting the narrative tension of the play without resorting to theatrical gesture. Outdoor light is rendered with the even clarity typical of his mature style rather than with Impressionist interest in atmospheric variation. The foliage setting provides cool neutral tones that set off the warmer palette of the figures' dresses.