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Lot Essay
Telemachus was the son of Odysseus and Penelope. His encounter with Calypso is relayed in the Odyssey, the first four books of which are often referred to as the Telemachy. When Odysseus failed to return home after the Trojan war, Telemachus set out in search of him, accompanied by the goddess Athena, in the guise of Mentor, Telemachus' old guardian. Having journeyed through Pylos and Lacedaemon, they were shipwrecked on the island of the nymph Calypso, who quickly fell in love with the young Telemachus and attempted to detain him, as she had done with Odysseus before him. Telemachus and Mentor eventually escape the island and are picked up by passing vessels. The saga was elaborated in a romance by the French writer Fenélon entitled The Adventures of Telemachus, published in 1699, which inspired French artists during the 18th century and British artists during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Hamilton, whose father had worked with the architect and decorator Robert Adam (1728-1792), trained from 1766 under Antonio Zucchi (1728-1795) in Rome, before studying at the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1769. He was a leading member of the second generation of British Neo-Classical artists, who built on the achievements of their forerunners, the Scot, Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798), and the American Benjamin West (1738-1820). Hamilton's work, which is looser than that of his predecessors, shows the influence of Henry Fuseli (1741-1802), with whom he collaborated on illustrations to Thomson's Season (1797) and Gray's Poems (1800). The present painting is characteristic of the work that he exhibited at the Academy between 1774 and 1801, which consisted mainly of history paintings and theatrical portraits.
Hamilton exhibited a second painting along with the present picture at the Royal Academy in 1791, showing Aeneas communicating to Dido the necessity of his departure from Carthage. Two small oil versions, or sketches, entitled Aeneas and Dido, and A Poetical Subject [Calypso receiving Telemachus and Mentor] (23 x 15 in. each), were sold as a pair at Christie's on 19 November 1970, lot 172.
Hamilton, whose father had worked with the architect and decorator Robert Adam (1728-1792), trained from 1766 under Antonio Zucchi (1728-1795) in Rome, before studying at the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1769. He was a leading member of the second generation of British Neo-Classical artists, who built on the achievements of their forerunners, the Scot, Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798), and the American Benjamin West (1738-1820). Hamilton's work, which is looser than that of his predecessors, shows the influence of Henry Fuseli (1741-1802), with whom he collaborated on illustrations to Thomson's Season (1797) and Gray's Poems (1800). The present painting is characteristic of the work that he exhibited at the Academy between 1774 and 1801, which consisted mainly of history paintings and theatrical portraits.
Hamilton exhibited a second painting along with the present picture at the Royal Academy in 1791, showing Aeneas communicating to Dido the necessity of his departure from Carthage. Two small oil versions, or sketches, entitled Aeneas and Dido, and A Poetical Subject [Calypso receiving Telemachus and Mentor] (23 x 15 in. each), were sold as a pair at Christie's on 19 November 1970, lot 172.