Odysseus

Odysseus, a 1925 etching, is unusual in Norman Lindsay’s oeuvre in its grand, serious handling of a mythic subject. Lindsay has used a very fine, detailed etching technique which gives the print accurate clarity. It depicts a scene from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, as the ship of the hero Odysseus travels past of group of hostile sirens. Odysseus dramatically captures the moment as the ship – an oar-powered Greek trireme – battles through mountainous waves towards the deceptively docile-looking sirens. Half women and half bird, sirens are prophetic mythical beings believed to be able to lure sailors to their deaths with their enchanting singing. In The Odyssey, Odysseus successfully evades their serenades by plugging his ears with beeswax and ordering his men to tie him to the ship’s mast.

Lindsay had long been fond of ancient Greek myth as a source of artistic inspiration; some of his early drawings as a child were illustrations of scenes from a copy of The Tales of Homer owned by his parents. He made model ships as a hobby, and Godfrey Blunden describes them cluttering the studio, "[cl]ippers, cutters, schooners, even a Roman trireme, all embellished with hand-carved figure-heads and gingerbread sterns." (Blunden, p. 19)

A 1928 full colour version of Odysseus, where the scene is reversed and painted in watercolour, is in the New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, New South Wales.

Sources:

Godfrey Blunden, Norman Lindsay – Watercolours (Sydney and London: Ure Smith, 1969)

http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Seirenes.html

https://ehive.com/collections/5568/objects/484151/odysseus

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art   August 2018