The Sorrow of Telemachus

The Sorrow of Telemachus (1783) is an oil on canvas painting by Angelica Kauffmann, commissioned by the Roman prelate Monsignor Onorato Caetani (1742‑1797) to illustrate episodes from François Fénelon’s 1699 novel Les Aventures de Télémaque. The work, dated 1783, portrays Telemachus in contemplation as Calypso orders her nymphs to cease praising Odysseus, a scene described in contemporary accounts. After Caetani’s collection, the painting passed through the hands of collector Eugene Fischoff and subsequently to Collis P. Huntington, Arabella Huntington, and Archer Milton Huntington before entering the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kauffmann also produced two later versions in 1788 (held by the Bündner Museum of Art, Chur) and 1989 (sold at Christie’s London).

The Sorrow of Telemachus is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The painting entered the museum through the bequest of Arabella Huntington, who inherited it from her father Eugene Fischoff and later passed it to the museum via the Huntington family holdings. No specific exhibition record is documented in the available sources; the work is listed only as part of the museum’s permanent collection. Its accession number is not specified in the provided references.

Painted in 1783 during Kauffmann's second Roman period, The Sorrow of Telemachus was commissioned by the scholar-collector Onorato Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, alongside its companion piece Telemachus and the Nymphs of Calypso, both now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work belongs to a wider Neoclassical engagement with Fénelon's 1699 novel, a text written for the instruction of the Duke of Burgundy and freely adapted from the first four books of the Odyssey. Kauffmann's Roman studio on Via Sistina, opened in 1782 with her husband Antonio Zucchi, served Grand Tour travellers and Roman patrons, situating the painting within her mature practice of literary-mythological subjects.

Critics including Schlegel and Freud have remarked on the androgynous quality of her male youths, and scholars note that Kauffmann, favoured by the London aristocracy for her sensibility, emphasized Telemachus's emotional paralysis over heroic action. Replicas were frequently requested, attesting to the composition's currency.

Angelica Kauffman's 1783 oil painting, The Sorrow of Telemachus, captures a poignant moment from Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. This work by the Swiss artist is part of the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It presents a classical scene with figures in draped attire, conveying a deep emotional narrative centered around Odysseus's son, Telemachus, during his arduous search for his father.