Alexander Rothaug (Vienna 1870-1946 Vienna)

Odysseus Longing for Home (Odysseus sehnsucht nach der Heimat)

circa 1910

oil on cardboard

17,4 x 27,1 cm.

signed lower right: Alexander Rothaug

verso also signed and inscribed by the artist: "Odysseus sehnsucht nach der Heimat. Ölgemälde von Alexander Rothaug"

Exhibition History:

“Ulisse l’arte e il mito” [“Ulysses, the Art and the Myth”], Musei San Domenico [San Domenico Museum], Forlì, Italy, February 14 to October 31, 2020.

Publication History:

Gianfranco Brunelli, et al., Ulisse l’arte e il mito [Ulysses, the Art and the Myth] (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2020), pgs. 328 (ill.) and 426.

An oil-sketch study for this painting is owned by a South German private collection.  See Horst G. Ludwig, Alexander und Leopold Rothaug, Zwei Wiener Maler um 1900 (Munich: Hirmer, 2009), ill. 16, pgs. 64, 67.  That collection also contains two related chalk drawings that are studies for the seated figure of Odysseus.  Ludwig, ill. 53, pgs. 138-139, and ill. 68, pgs. 162-163.  A large version of Alexander Rothaug's Odysseus sehnsucht nach der Heimat, oil on canvas, 112 x 165 cm, focusing on the seated figure of Odysseus, is in the collection of the Belvedere museum, Vienna, inventory no. 4802.  See https://digital.belvedere.at/objects/3557/odysseus-sehnsucht-nach-der-heimat

Alexander Rothaug (Vienna, 1870-1946) was an Austrian painter and illustrator in the Symbolist idiom, who trained at the Vienna Academy of Art from 1885 to 1892.  From 1892, he lived and worked for a time in Munich as an illustrator for the humor magazine, the Fliegende Blätter.  He is regarded as one of the most accomplished Austrian illustrators of his time; and his work can be compared favorably with that of his American contemporary, Maxfield Parrish.  

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890)

Greek-language passage from Homer's Odyssey, with Odysseus longing for home (Odyssey 9, 34-38): "naught is sweeter than a man's own land"

autograph album page

ink on paper mounted on card

Ilion (Troy), May 25, 1890 (seven months before the famous archaeologist Schliemann's death)

The Daulton Collection