While you live Drink!
Fine Art Illumination by Arthur Szyk. 1940.
from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ~ Antique Art Plate

seaside*collectibles is pleased to bring you this incredible art print which was salvaged from a 1940s Limited Edition of  The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.  It is a true First Edition, first printing with the renowned works of ARTHUR SZYK - illustrating, designing and rendering the artwork for this special volume.  

The illuminations have bright, vibrant colors and are in remarkably fine shape considering their age. Take a really, really close look.  Szyk's artful detailing in each of the illumination is quite astounding.  Purchase includes 2 extra printed pages of text from Rubaiyat. These can be framed with your print. These are the original 1940 plates, not the later (1946-) reproductions of the images which were printed directly onto the page. We assure you, these art  prints are uncommon in this format and highly sot after.

 Image measures: 6.25 inches [15.9 cm ] x 4.75 inches [12.1 cm]
Condition: EXCELLENT. Bright gold tones, with overall brilliant colors & detail. 

Printed in the Great Britain on heavy stock paper.
Page mount measures: 11 inches [27.9 cm] x 8.25 inches [ 21 cm]
Double page opens to: 16.5 inches [41.9 cm] x 11 inches [27.9 cm]
Condition: VERY GOOD++ Clean. Unmarked. Blank, cream colored, medium-heavy weight paper. Binding present Some rippling present and age toning present with some considerable discoloration along the binding edge.

 

A BRIEF HISTORY 
"Omar Khayyam (1048-c.1131) Persian. Poet.
A mathematician, astronomer and philosopher that worked at the court in Eastern Iran.
The Rubaiyat was originally written in 1120 A.C.E.  Many verses (four line quatrains or rubai) have been attributed to him but it is not clear how many of these he actually composed.One of the earliest established collections of quatrains dates from 1461. This Ouseley manuscript, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England was used by FitzGerald in his translation.
Edward FitzGerald [b. Mar. 31, 1809 - d. June 14, 1883] British. Writer, poet.
Wealthy Victorian ‘gentleman of letters’ living most of his life in Suffolk, in & around Woodbridge, England.  Edward Cowell (later a Professor at Cambridge) set FitzGerald on to his Persian studies. Cowell discovered & sent a copy to FitzGerald of the Ouseley manuscript of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.  This, together with another larger manuscript from Calcutta, provided FitzGerald with the basis for his Rubaiyat.
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
First published in 1859 and contained 75 quatrains. It was FitzGerald’s interpretation (not a literal translation) of the verses attributed to Omar Khayyam.  After its initial failure, FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat gained popularity first in Britain, the United States and then spread throughout the rest of the world and had since been translated into over 70 different languages to become the most widely known poems in the world." [ed] -- OKR.com

ABOUT the Artist.
Arthur Szyk. Polish-born American. [June 16, 1894 – September 13, 1951] Graphic artist, book illustrator, stage designer, caricaturist.
" Szyk was a fighter from his childhood in Lodz in 1894, when he was expelled from high school for making anti-czarist sketches. His miniatures frequently expressed his fervent Zionism and Polish pride. He did not just fight through his art either. He fought in the trenches with the Polish army in World War I and joined the anti-semitic white Russian units of the Polish Bolshevik war of 1921 under an assumed name to save Jewish lives from pogroms. 

Szyk is most famous in America for the war against Nazi Germany and its allies that he waged with his venomous cartoons that were featured on the covers of Collier's, Time, and Esquire and were widely popular with soldiers. His efforts prompted Eleanor Roosevelt to declare him a "one man army against Hitler."

Syyk found his true calling in the medieval art of miniaturists and illuminators of sacred texts. In his exquisitely detailed miniatures, he depicted the struggle for the rebirth of the Jewish state, the sufferings of the Jews under Nazi occupation, and the heroic resistance in the ghettos. His illuminations of sacred texts include his Hagaddah (1956), which the Times Literary Supplement declared "worthy to be placed among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has ever produced." [ed] -- SLS

"Arthur Szyk was a great artist. Endowed by God with a rare sensitivity to beauty and with a rare skill in giving it graphic representation, he used his talents to create a series of works of splendor and magnificence that will live forever in the history of art. 

But Arthur Szyk was more than a great artist. He was a great man, a champion of justice, a fearless warrior in the cause of every humanitarian endeavor. His art was his tool and he used it brilliantly. It was in his hands a weapon of struggle with which he fought for the causes close to his heart. " --Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser 

[Categories Antique Vintage Ephemera Arthur Szyk illustration 19th Century Fine Art Mini ature painting s Modern illuminations SUN ENGRAVING COMPANY LIMITED EDITION ENGLISH MONOTYPE SACHSENWALD with ALBERTUS CAPITALS Ernest Ingham Fanfare Press, Great Britain 1940 Hebrew text | Lover s Poetry Party Celebration of Life framed art gift are collectables collecting ref: Prt_SZYK_05]