The Odyssey by Homer is not just a very early literary masterpiece but a precociously modern one. Its hero Odysseus, often known, as here, by the Latin version of his name Ulysses, is driven from one peril to another as he tries to get home from the Trojan war. Meanwhile, his wife, Penelope, and son Telemachus are persecuted by suitors seeking to take over his house. There are deep psychological resonances that make it more like a novel than a string of magic tales. In this painting, a French artist from the era of Zola homes in on that realism to portray Ulysses plunged into introspective thought on a sunny but bleak beach. The harshly lit rocks and low hills covered in sparse grass add to his solitary mood as he contemplates a shipwreck that killed his crew, stranding him far from home. This painting’s blend of prosaic reality with Greek myth may seem eccentric – yet the same idea structures James Joyce’s great modernist work Ulysses