It is relatively easy to find information about many of the artists who have illustrated The Rubaiyat. This appendix gathers together some biographical and bibliographical details for some of the illustrators about whom it is less easy to find information.
She was born in Bristol in 1890 and trained at the John Hassall School of Art in London in the years prior to the First World War. It was in 1914 that she came to the notice of the editor of The Tatler, who engaged her to illustrate his satirical ‘society page’, under the title of “The Letters of Eve”, the letter–format text for which was written by Olivia Maitland–Davidson. This was the beginning of Fish’s long career as a contributor of drawings, cartoons and caricatures for numerous magazines, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and Punch. Her cartoons for The Tatler led, in 1916, to their re–publication in The First Book of Eve, “drawn by Fish, written and designed by Fowl”. (She always signed her work FISH; ‘Fowl’ was the pen–name of Edward Huskinson, the editor of The Tatler.) Basically this consisted of a series of cartoons about the war–time adventures of society belle Eve, occasionally accompanied by her sisters Evelyn and Evelinda, not to mention her dog Tou–tou. Her adventures included her plans for a swimsuit–clad bathing–belle coastal defence corps and a beauty salon for the armed forces! (Both of these classics are reproduced in Gallery 2F, Fig.7 & Fig.8.) The cartoons were by Fish, with the captions by ‘Fowl’, and the contents were actually quite a biting satire on the “polite society” of the time. The book proved so popular that it was followed by The New Eve in 1917, and The Third Eve Book in 1919.
In a similar vein of social satire, in 1920 she illustrated High Society by Dorothy Parker, George S.Chappell and Frank Crowninshield; in 1924 she illustrated The World We Laugh In by Harry Graham; and in 1938 she produced her own book of cartoons, Awful Weekends – and Guests. (Some of the cartoons in this last had previously been published in The Strand Magazine.) Two examples from Awful Weekends – and Guests are shown in Gallery 2F (Fig.9 & Fig.10.)
Cornelis Veth, in his Comic Art in England (1930) said that “to see actual modern society pictured in a really modern way, observed with almost cynical understanding and attacked with its own weapons, we must look at the drawings of ‘FISH’.” (p.195–6) He went on:
“The mock naiveté of the drawing makes the shamelessness of the subjects acceptable and veils the cutting satire. Hitting especially at the modern girl of fashion, independent, wasteful, not subject to any rule, trifling with everything, these caricatures yet do not spare the older generation either, which is made to appear conventional, solemn and silly, or the young men, who appear strong and handsome in body, but insipid, dull and easy dupes of the coquette. It is a world where the girls, emancipated the wrong way, are masters of a piteous situation, and the young men, the very heroes of our sentimental tales of adventure, lantern–jawed and broad–shouldered, look like superannuated boys….” (p.196–7)
In the midst of all this social satire, of course, in 1922, there appeared her illustrated edition of The Rubaiyat. One does sometimes wonder, therefore, if hidden within her illustrations of FitzGerald’s verses, there might not be some symbolic comment on the decadent eat–drink–and–be–merry attitude of the ‘high society’ of the 1920s. Certainly the cartoon–like characters of her Rubaiyat illustrations do seem curiously akin to her satirical cartoons and to some of her cover illustrations for the likes of Vanity Fair. On the other hand, they are also similar in style to some of the illustrations which Kay Nielsen did for an unpublished edition of A Thousand and One Nights – a sort of Art Deco orientalism! (Some examples are shown in Gallery 2F, Figs.11 to 13 – browse here.) Perhaps, then, she simply used the same cartoon style to different ends in different contexts.We should also bear in mind that she illustrated at least two books for children, The Noah’s Ark Book (1918) and The Clock and the Cockatoo (1922), so not everything of hers was social satire (though of course it is not unknown for children’s books to carry a ‘message’!)
But to return to biographical details, in 1918 she married Walter Sefton, though she continued to use her maiden name for her work. As regards her career as a painter, she only ever exhibited one painting at the Royal Academy – “Kilkhampton” in 1933. (Kilkhampton is a village in north–east Cornwall.) Sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, she and her husband (who died in 1952) went to live in St. Ives in Cornwall, where she joined the Penwith Society of Artists, exhibiting at its first show. On this occasion, according to David Tovey, “her humour and gaiety were welcomed by one reviewer as an antidote to those members of that Society who were ‘inclined to view the business of painters with the solemnity of undertakers at a mass funeral’.” [Creating a Splash (2003), p.219.] Shortly after this, she transferred her allegiance to the St. Ives Society of Artists, and exhibited with them for the rest of her life. As a cat–lover many of her paintings depicted cats (one is pictured in David Tovey’s book), and the proceeds from the sales of these paintings went to the Cats Protection League. She died in 1964.
Sources: For an excellent account of Fish and her work, including a chronological listing, see William Connelly, “A Paying Profession for Clever Girls – Part 1 – Anne Harriet Fish” in Studies in Illustration, Issue 36, p.34-51 (Imaginative Book Illustration Society, Summer 2007.) There is also a good entry for her, by Mark Bryant, in the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Balfour is something of a mystery man. Brigid Peppin and Lucy Micklethwaite, in their Dictionary of British Book Illustrators: the Twentieth Century (1983), wrote that, “Nothing seems to have been recorded about Balfour’s life and career.” He is not known as a magazine illustrator, and he illustrated no other books before he produced his illustrated edition of The Rubaiyat for Constable and Company in 1920. Indeed, he only ever illustrated one other book besides The Rubaiyat: he produced the decorative chapter heading illustrations for Constance Bridges’ book Thin Air, an account of an expedition to the Himalayas, published in 1930. So how, with no prior reputation as an illustrator, did he come to illustrate The Rubaiyat for such a prestigious company as Constable & Co.? No–one seems to know, and thus far my enquiries at Constable & Co. have drawn a blank. One possibility, as we shall see presently, is that it was on account of his costume designs.
However, it is known that he was Ronald Egerton Balfour (not Ronald Edmund Balfour, as some dictionaries of artists dub him); that he was the son of Sir Alfred Granville Balfour; that he was born in 1896; that he served in the Navy during the First World War, taking part in the Battle of Jutland; that he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve at the start of the Second World War, becoming a Lieutenant–Commander, working in the Map Room of the Admiralty; that he married Deirdre Hart–Davis, the sister of Rupert Hart–Davis, in 1930, by whom he had two daughters; and that he died in a car crash in 1941. Unfortunately, though Rupert Hart–Davis refers to Balfour several times in his book The Power of Chance (1991) – to his marriage (p.43), to his role in the RNVR at the start of the Second World War (p.135), and to his death in a car accident (p.135) – he makes no reference to his artistic career, such as it was (though in addition to his Rubaiyat and the book by Constance Bridges, he does seem to have dabbled in fashion illustration and costume design, none of which seems to have been published, however.)
Constance Bridges’ book is not commonly encountered, so it may be useful to give some information about it here. The title page tells us “Decorations by Ronald Balfour”, but in her Foreword Bridges tells us that in her book, “for evident reasons, I have not used the real names of the persons concerned.” Thus, when she tells us of her indebtedness “to ‘Ian’ for his characteristic decorations (done, I trust, with both hands”, she is not only telling us that in the text of the book Ian is Balfour, but she is also referring to Balfour’s extraordinary ability to draw equally well with either hand, and, on occasion, with both hands at once. She refers to this ability again on p.13:
“Ian, a pencil in each hand, was racing a Hindu on the bank. The Hindu, squatted in a neat triangle, was languidly dipping his turban in the river. Ian’s right and left hands, equally adept, were trying to put him down on paper before he finished and could spoil the composition.”
Again, on p.59:
“Ian sketched steadily – a series of imaginative fantasies. His specialty was naked women. When we expressed solicitude over this symptom of a dangerous suppression, he would grin guiltily with his cigarette drooping from his upper lip and go on placidly creating his paper harem. His left hand sufficed if he was half–hearted about it; but when he was absorbed by the intricacies of a Beardsleyesque pattern, he used both hands on opposite corners of the design to the respectful wonder of the rest of us.”
We are told nothing more about Balfour other than that he joined the expedition “by request” (whether his or hers is not clear – p.19); that he was “six feet tall and slim as a needle” (p.60–1); that he had an interest in collecting rare plants (pp.23–4, 61, 67); that he had to leave the expedition early (p.83) to return to “a London desk” (p.119); and that he had “troubles of his own, happily put aside for months, which he must return to England to face” (p.124.)
It is infuriating that there is no overlap between the books by Rupert Hart–Davis and Constance Bridges, so much so that one could easily believe there were two different Ronald Balfours in the arena. That they are the same, though, is actually confirmed by his surviving family members.
Four of his designs for Constance Bridges’ chapter headingsand two of his unpublished costume designs can be found in Gallery 1C, Folder 2 (Figs.7–10 and 12–13 – browse here.) As can be seen there, some of his Rubaiyat illustrations are very reminiscent of his costume designs, leading to the suggestion that, in the absence of any other apparent reason, he got a contract with Constable & Co on account of these. The problem with this idea is that his known costume designs are all unpublished, and there is no known example of a published design for either a fashion magazine or a theatre costume which might have come to the attention of Constable & Co. Possibly he used a pseudonym (as indeed ‘Erté’ did), and this is why we today don’t know of him in that field, but this is pure guesswork at the time of writing. It is also possible, of course, that a portfolio of unpublished drawings did the trick, perhaps in conjunction with a personal recommendation via family or friends, but again this is pure guesswork. It is known that he had some association with Fox Films, which may have been connected to costume design, but this was in 1935, long after his Rubaiyat had first been published.
As regards the women in his Rubaiyat illustrations looking more like ‘flappers’ of the 1920s than oriental beauties, one does wonder – as with the illustrations of Anne Harriet Fish – if this was in any way a comment on the times he lived in. Given his simple predilection for his “paper harem”, though, there seems to be no evidence for this in the case of Balfour.
Sources: The best sources of information about Balfour at the time of writing are the articles by Martin Steenson published in Studies in Illustration, Issue 31/32, p.34-37 (Imaginative Book Illustration Society, Winter 2005/Spring 2006) and Issue 36, p.23–25 (IBIS Summer 2007), with the input from Nicolas Barker in Issue 34, p.23 (IBIS Winter 2006). Some of Martin’s information in his second article came from Balfour’s daughters, though actually they could tell him very little, as they were very young (ages 4 and 9) at the time of their father’s death. My thanks are due to Martin for permission to reproduce the two unpublished costume designs featured in his second article.
(An updated and extended study of Ronald Balfour and his work can be found in the Notes & Queries section of this archive here.)
Little biographical information seems to be available about John Yunge–Bateman (his name frequently appears without the hyphen, incidentally, so he is sometimes referred to as Bateman.) It seems he is to be identified with a John Erskine Yunge–Bateman, who was born in Folkestone in 1897; was admitted as a cadet at the Royal Naval College at Osborne in 1910, retiring as a Lieutenant–Commander in 1926; and was married at Maidenhead in 1928 to Miss Eileen Magee. If this is indeed the correct Bateman (as opposed, say, to the son of the foregoing), then he was in his late forties when his earliest book illustrations were published, which, though not impossible, does seem rather a late start. Be that as it may, he seems to have begun working as a book illustrator in about 1946, continuing thus well into the 1960s, until – again, if we have the correct Bateman – he died in 1971. Fortunately, Bateman’s extensive book illustrating career is one that we can trace quite easily thanks to COPAC and AbeBooks.
In 1946 he illustrated two books by Charles N. Buzzard, namely The Bumble Bee and Shining Hours – the former was an educational book for children; the latter essentially an account of the author’s bee–keeping experiences in the South of France. Indeed, Brigid Peppin and Lucy Micklethwaite, in their Dictionary of British Book Illustrators: the Twentieth Century (1983), wrote of Bateman that, “His best drawings are documentary close-ups of bees.” (As already quoted in the notes on Gallery 1C, Folder 4, it was Peppin and Micklethwaite who also famously said of Bateman’s illustrations for The Rubaiyat that “he attempted to give a cultural veneer to ‘page three’ titillation.”) He also illustrated John Crompton’s book Ways of the Ant (1954) and Nesta Pain’s book Lesser Worlds (1953), a book about spiders, wasps, beetles, bees and ants. Later, in 1963, he illustrated Oren Arnold’s book, Marvels of the Sea and Seashore. He does seem to have had a particular leaning towards natural history illustration, then.
But Bateman illustrated books on widely different fronts. He illustrated Roy Lacey, Wanderlust – a Travel Anthology (1948); Louise Fellowes, A Girls Hobby Book (1950); Christopher Woodforde’s collection of tales of the supernatural, A Pad in the Straw (1952); John Eric Davey’s book for schools, Coal Mining (1960) and Charles Trivet, Let’s look at Cats (1964). He also, incidentally, designed the dust–jacket for the first UK edition of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train, published here in 1950, and made famous a year later by Alfred Hitchcock’s film.
Moving closer to our particular interest in The Rubaiyat, for Winchester Publications, for whom he also illustrated the book Wanderlust mentioned above, he illustrated two companion volumes of Shakespeare’s longer poems, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. Both were published in 1948. As might be expected from their titles, both contain mildly erotic drawings, clear fore–runners of his Rubaiyat illustrations of a decade later. Examples are shown in Gallery 1C, Folder 4 (Figs.5 to 8 – browse here), and one does wonder if it was these which actually prompted the choice of Bateman as illustrator for the Golden Cockerel edition of The Rubaiyat. [Roderick Cave and Sarah Manson, in A History of the Golden Cockerel Press, 1920–1960 (2002), p.223, say that the choice came about after Christopher Sandford of Golden Cockerel Press saw some of Bateman’s work at an exhibition in Foyle’s Gallery in 1956. Unfortunately they don’t give any details of the work exhibited.]
Finally, in addition to illustrating The Rubaiyat for the Golden Cockerel Press in 1958, Bateman also illustrated for them, in the same year, an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It appeared under the grandiose title of The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso, translated by the Most Eminent Hands, a Selection from the 1717 Edition. [The impressive 1717 edition, in contrast, appeared under the more modest title of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books, the eminent translators including Dryden, Addison and Pope.] The Golden Cockerel Edition was designed to impress, and the selections from Ovid gave enough scope for Bateman to weave in plenty of naked women. Two of the illustrations are shown in Gallery 1C, Folder 4 (Figs.9 & 10 – browse here), and it is immediately noticeable that they are by the same hand as The Rubaiyat illustrations!
In fact, the edition of Ovid was commissioned first, in 1957, and it was after seeing Bateman’s preliminary drawings for this that Sandford commissioned him to illustrate The Rubaiyat. As it happened, The Rubaiyat came out first. Interestingly, Bateman’s illustrations for the Ovid led to something of a falling out between Sandford, and Gwyn Jones, who had edited down the text of the 1717 edition. Jones was horrified by Bateman’s illustrations, telling Sandford that they “go past the delicate and indefinable limit that separates decency from indecency… there’s too much nudity and it’s the wrong sort of nudity.” As a result, Jones didn’t want his name to be associated with it, which is why his name doesn’t appear on the title page. In the end, Cave and Manson say, “Bateman’s work did nothing to bring Cockerel collectors back; he repelled them.” (op.cit.p.224–5.) A year later, the American publisher Thomas Yoseloff took over the Golden Cockerel Press – hence the Yoseloff and A.S.Barnes & Co reprints of the Bateman Rubaiyat which appeared in the 1960s.
One curious aspect of Bateman’s career remains to be mentioned: wartime camouflage! According to Guy Hartcup’s book Camouflage (1979), Bateman was the head of a British naval camouflage section during World War II (p. 53). In this role, in 1943, he did an oil painting, “The Outside Viewing Tank: Directorate of Camouflage, Naval Section”, currently in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. An image of it is available online at:
As Hartcup explains, this viewing tank was set up for conducting experiments on sea–going camouflage.
Sources: In addition to those cited already, the Bear Alley Blogspot is useful:
http://bearalley.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/j-yunge-bateman.html
(An updated and extended study of John Yunge–Bateman and his work can be found in the Notes & Queries section of this archive here.)
“O’Brien” was Kathleen O’Brien (1914-1991), the Australian comic book artist, fashion artist and book illustrator. She also used the names Kath O’Brien and Kate O’Brien (not to be confused, then, with the Irish novelist and playwright, Kate O’Brien), though she signed her art work simply “O’Brien”. She is perhaps best known for her creation of the cartoon strip Wanda the War Girl in 1943, which recounted the wartime adventures of a curvy young Australian girl who “did her bit” for her Country. At the end of the Second World War, the comic strip became just Wanda – the post–War adventures of a curvy young Australian girl – and it continued to run for several years.
The mildly erotic nature of the illustrations for the Gornall edition of The Rubaiyat does rather suggest a male artist, but in fact the Wanda cartoons have a similar mild eroticism about them, and though I could find little documentary evidence directly linking Kathleen O’Brien to the Gornall Rubaiyat, the Wanda cartoon strips provide it: the “O’Brien” signature on the cover and the illustrations of the Gornall Rubaiyat is identical to that on the Wanda cartoon strips. (See Gallery 1C, Folder 6 or browse here.)
During her career as a book illustrator, O’Brien produced twelve books in all, the most popular being Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, The Little Mermaid, published in 1943. According to Design & Art Australia Online (address below):
“She illustrated Australia’s first unabridged Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in Australia (ACP: Sydney, 1943: reprints 1944, 1946 and 1947 – all on increasingly poor quality paper) – one of several wartime versions of Alice produced along with other British classics to compensate for the fact that UK books were no longer being shipped to Australia. O’Brien’s Alice is a bold, confident and assertive little girl in a short wartime skirt. She illustrated Ella Greenway’s Peter Cat (Colorgravure: Melbourne, 1950) and one of Nourma Handford’s ‘Carloola’ books – Carloola Backstage: A Career Novel for Girls (Dymock’s Book Arcade: Sydney, n.d. [1956]).”
One wonders, therefore, if the Gornall Rubaiyat was one of the “other British classics” published “to compensate for the fact that UK books were no longer being shipped to Australia.”
Sources:
Design & Art Australia Online: at http://www.daao.org.au/bio/kate-obrien/biography/. The site’s biographical details for O’Brien are taken from Heritage: the National Women's Art Book: 500 works by 500 Australian Women Artists from Colonial Times to 1955, edited by Joan Kerr (1995).
Ross was born in Scotland in 1872. In his teens he emigrated to America, studying painting and drawing at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute in San Francisco. To earn a living, he worked in the art department of the San Francisco Chronicle until 1904. A few years later he moved to New York where he seems to have concentrated on book illustration. He died in New York, in 1946.
His career as a book illustrator is easier to document than his life. In 1904 he did the frontispiece for Prosit – a Book of Toasts by ‘Clotho’, this apparently being the pseudonym for a group of writers which may have included Ambrose Bierce. Interestingly, several toasts are direct quotes from FitzGerald (p.2, p.4, p.22), and the following verse (p.113), for which no author is cited, will surely be of some interest to readers:
Here’s to old Omar Khayyam –
I’m stuck on that beggar – I am!
His women and wine are something divine –
For his verses I don’t care a damn!
The following year, 1905, Ross did the frontispiece (which can be found in Gallery 2B, Folder 2, Fig.1) for Jennie Day Haines’ book Sovereign Women versus Mere Man, a medley of quotations relating to the eternal battle of the sexes. [An example for the curious: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, – they are only possible for the bachelor.” (p.15) This quote is from the 1904 novel The Crossing, by the American novelist named, somewhat confusingly, Winston Churchill.]
This was followed in 1907 by his illustration of Edmund Vance Cooke’s Impertinent Poems. The book is a collection of light–hearted poems about Life and Living. In his “Pre–Impertinence” (the Foreword in any ordinary book) Cooke wrote: “Anticipating the intelligent critic of Impertinent Poems, it may well be remarked that the chief impertinence is in calling them poems.” Perhaps not surprisingly, then, Ross’s illustration for the front cover shows a worried Jester holding a statue of Atlas with the World on his shoulders. This book is actually of considerable interest to us here, as it not only contains multiple illustrations by Ross, thus giving us more insight into the artist, but also some of the illustrations contain interesting bits of symbolism which relate to his much later Rubaiyat illustrations. Examples (including the cover illustration),with commentary, are given in Gallery 2B, Folder 2, Figs.2&ndash8 and Fig.12 – browse here.
There then seems to be something of a gap (or the books are rare?), until in 1921 he illustrated John Martin’s book The Children’s Munchausen, followed in 1928 by Frederic Arnold Kummer’s humorous novel Ladies in Hades, and in 1929 by Washington Irving’s The Christmas Dinner.
Ladies in Hades is a delightful oddity. Subtitled "A Story of Hell’s Smart Set”, it deals with a group of twelve of the most famous vamps in Hell, who form a ladies club and take it in turns in describe their amorous adventures in life. Eve, Salome, the Queen of Sheba, Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and other notorious ladies, stir up such a scandal in the Nether Regions that an irate Satan is forced to disband the club. Again the book is of interest for its multiple illustrations by Ross, which though not really relevant to his Rubaiyat illustrations, except for their use of scantily clad and naked women, are nevertheless worth a feature in Gallery 2B, Folder 2, Figs.9–11! (Browse here.)
The 1930s saw Ross illustrate at least four editions of Dickens and a limited edition of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. He also illustrated Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent in 1939.
The 1940s seems to have marked his most prolific period. He illustrated a whole series of Living Biographies by Henry and Dana Lee Thomas, these being devoted to Great Composers (1940), Great Painters (1940), Great Philosophers (1941), Great Scientists (1941), American Statesmen (1942), Religious Leaders (1942), Famous Novelists (1943), Great Poets (1946), Famous Men (1946) and Famous Women (1946). He also illustrated The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers in 1945 and an edition of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson in 1946. His illustrated edition of The Rubaiyat, of course, appeared in 1941.
(An updated and extended study of Gordon Ross and his work can be found in the Notes & Queries section of this archive here.)
The Tajvidis were brothers from an artistic family, hailing originally from Isfahan in Iran. Akbar and Mohammad were the fourth or fifth generation of artists in their family, and both were painters as well as illustrators. The styles of Mohammad and Akbar in Iranian "miniature painting” are very similar, and their Rubaiyat illustrations can easily be confused. Their father, the painter Hadi Tajvidi (1892-1940), combined the traditional miniature with some western principles of painting (such as perspective, depiction of shadow, the use of new types of paint, and the combination of paints) and created a new style of Iranian miniature. In this, Akbar and Mohammad followed in their father’s footsteps. Many dismissed the Tajvidi style as "commercial" and “worthless”, but many others praised it for its revival of the traditional "miniature" style of painting.
Mohammad Tajvidi was born in 1925. After completing his studies at the School of National Arts, he subsequently became the assistant professor there. Eventually he was promoted to a senior professorship, and continued teaching until 1963. He died in Tehran in 1995 at the age of 70.
Mohammad illustrated a large number of books in his time, many of them works of poetry, notably by Hafiz and Khayyam – indeed, he seems to have illustrated several different editions of Khayyam. He also produced the covers for a large number of books, in addition to fully illustrating many others, and he created postcards, calendars and other types of printed art–work. Gallery 2G is devoted to an abridged edition of The Rubaiyat which was illustrated by him, and clearly designed to be given away as a gift at Christmas and New Year. A good selection of his “miniature” work can be found on the Iranian culture website Shahre Farang at:
http://shahrefarang.com/en/mohammad-tajvidi/
In fact, I must thank Sourena Parham of Shahre Farang for his help with the above.
Akbar Tajvidi was born in 1927. In addition to being a painter and illustrator, he was also an art historian and archaeologist, as well as an art critic, and a prominent champion of Iranian contemporary painting in the 1960s. [See Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution, Shiva Balagi and Lynn Gumpert (eds) (2002), p.22–3 & notes on p.35.] In addition to his “miniature” style paintings, he also painted numerous landscapes. Unlike his miniatures, these are mostly dated. They were painted in both France and Iran, mostly during the period 1943–1974, but with at least four examples of a later date (2 are dated 1980, 1 is dated 1992 and 1 is dated 1995, and all four were painted in France.) Examples of both types of work can be found on the French website:
http://tajvidi.free.fr/overview.html#SUMMARY.
(At the time of writing, the “Professional Activity” section of the site is inactive, which is a pity, as it might have explained why all Akbar’s later landscapes were all painted in France, and why he is featured so prominently on a French website. Could this be because he lived in France following his retirement? Was his stay perhaps extended on account of the Islamic Revolution in Iran ? Certainly he died in Paris in 2017, though a few days later his body was transferred for burial in Tehran, in accordance with his will.)
**********
Biographies of other artists who have illustrated The Rubaiyat can be found in the Notes and Queries section. These include Gilbert James, Cecil G. Trew, Helen M. Sinclair, Charles Conder, John Buckland Wright, William George Stirling, Augustus John, Fred Adlington, Frank Chesworth, Eleanor Joyce Francis, Isabel Hawxhurst Hall, Doris M. Palmer, Annemarie Bonnet, and Ned Wethered.
