Search our Site


Untitled - portrait of Joaquin Miller (from the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam") by Adelaide Hanscom

Untitled - portrait of Joaquin Miller (from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) by Adelaide Hanscom

Untitled - portrait of Joaquin Miller (from the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam")

Adelaide Hanscom

Title

Untitled - portrait of Joaquin Miller (from the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam")

 
Artist

Adelaide Hanscom

  1876 - 1931 (biography)
Year
1905  
Technique
photogravure 
Image Size
5 5/16 x 2 3/4" image 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
signed proof, outside the unsigned edition of ca 250. 
Annotations
text, beneath image "Copyright 1905 by Dodge Publishing Co." 
Reference
 
Paper
fine wove tissue 
State
published 
Publisher
Dodge Publishing Co. 1905, New York 
Inventory ID
21098 
Price
SOLD
Description

Early California photographer Adelaide Hanscom hand worked the negatives to achieve the images she wanted. She was one of the pioneers of this technique. The 'Rubaiyat...' was published in 1905 by Dodge publishing Company, City of New York and included 28 photogravures by her.

This image follows verse LXVII in the Rubaiyat: "Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire / And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire / Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves / So late emerg'd from, shall soon expire." It is the 21st of 28 images.

Hanscom used the colorful California poet Joaquin Miller (1837-1913) as the model. The text for the printing of the Rubaiyat was translated into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald and was illustrated with Hanscom's photographs. The Persian Symbolist costumes were designed by Orlof Orlow.

This pencil signed photogravure proof was from the collection of author George Wharton James (1858-1923), who was another one of Hanscom's models for the Rubaiyat. The negatives were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.