Achelous and Hercules

Achelous and Hercules
Artist	Thomas Hart Benton
Year	1947
Dimensions	62+7⁄8 by 264+1⁄8 inches (159.6 by 671 cm)
Location	Smithsonian American Art Museum
Accession No.	1985.2
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Achelous and Hercules is a 1947 mural painting by Thomas Hart Benton. It depicts a bluejeans-wearing Hercules wrestling with the horns of a bull, a shape the protean 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 murals on a river-related theme.^[1]