NEW YORK, NY.- This original gouache and watercolour illustration by Sir William Russell Flint is just one of 20 created for the landmark publication The Odyssey of Homer, published in 1925 by The Medici Society.

To be offered for sale in Swann Auction Galleries’ Illustration Art Auction on December 6 in New York, it depicts the Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, at her loom awaiting his return from his ten-year travels.

As the tale recalls, Penelope kept her many suitors at bay by telling them that she would not choose from among them until she had finished weaving the intricate burial shroud – shown here – for Odysseus’s father, Laertes. Secretly, each night she would unravel part of her day’s work to ensure that the job was never done.

Here, Russell Flint also depicts her maidservant, Melantho, who eventually betrays Penelope’s secret to her suitors.

Signed and dated 1914, when the work was completed, the planned publication was delayed for a decade because of the outbreak of the First World War.

The suite of 20 colour illustrations are considered the artist’s final book illustration masterworks, following on from those he created for H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines in 1907, WS Gilbert’s Savoy Operas in 1909, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in 1910-11 and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in 1912.

The estimate is $10,000 to $15,000. Live bidding online is available.