Artists of the Omar Khayyam Club of London, 1892 to 1929

By Danton O'Day

Read about a cartoonist, a spy, the man who developed camouflage and others who illustrated The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, one of the most popular poems in history. It also is one of the most illustrated collection of verses of all time. At the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, Edward FitzGerald’s translation of Omar’s four-line verses was a world-wide phenomenon that reached cult status. Many clubs and organizations formed to study and to celebrate the poetry, its poet and translator. This ebook documents the 28 menu artists of the Omar Khayyam Club of London from 1892-1929, a club that still exists. This is the first time all the artist’s pictures have been presented in ebook format. In addition to presenting all the artwork, the book reveals many discoveries about incorrect artist credits, an unidentified artist and errors in lists and timelines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danton O'Day
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005103088

Danton O'Day

Professor Emeritus Danton H. O’Day, BSc, MSc, PhD, has studied and done research in Canada, the USA and the Netherlands. He obtained his Assistant, Associate and Full Professorship in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, with a cross-appointment to Cell and Systems Biology at the University of Toronto.He has published over 130 refereed articles in leading research journals including Nature, Biological Reviews, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and others. Danton has also published research on the use of animations in teaching and books and articles on student learning. For the last 20 years he has pursued the Calmodulin Hypothesis of AD and other neurodegenerative diseases. He has an active YouTube Channel (Danton Canada) where he presents videos on AD as well as some of his original music and other videos:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6bsbF_EcQoOFdeBvcNXKw

Book preview

Dedication

To my lifelong friend, Richard Rick Ryan.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to Joseph Howard, who not only offered insightful comments on an early draft of the book but also supplied several pictures as indicated within. As always my partner Susan O’Day, kept me on track with helpful comments and encouragement to write clearly.

Any errors are mine alone.

Preface

Like the author’s previous three volumes, The Golden Age of Rubaiyat Art, 1884-1913. Volumes I-III, this work continues the cataloging of the early artists of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In this case, they are the artists who contributed pictures for menus for the dinner meetings held by the Omar Khayyam Club of London up to 1929. It presents a large number of pictures previously unseen by the general public because they first appeared on menus at meetings where attendance was restricted. The second and only time they were all published was in two limited edition publications for Club members and a select group of others. While some of the artists (e.g., Frank Brangwyn, Gilbert James, Blanche McManus, and Elihu Vedder) are well known for their Rubaiyat artistry, most of the menu artists are not. It is hoped that the artwork and the short artist backgrounds presented here will encourage others to study some of the lesser artistic lights in the history of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat but who, more often, had made their mark in other ways at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and for the first three decades thereafter.

Chapter One

The Omar Khayyam Club of London

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Edward FitzGerald is one of the most widely published books in the history of poetry. It is also one of the most illustrated. Many of the world’s greatest book illustrators used their talents to bring the collection of short four-line poems to life allowing both the artwork and the poetry to be enjoyed in volumes printed for the public. In 2007, for the first time this nearly 150-year artistic history was summarized by Martin and Mason in The Art of Omar Khayyam—Illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. In their book the authors linked many of the artists’ renderings with each of the 75 verses from his first version. In 2017, a detailed cataloging of the first artists who illustrated, decorated or embellished publicly available copies of all five versions of FitzGerald’s translations was published in The Golden Age of Rubaiyat Art, 1884-1913.

During this early artistic era, essentially hidden from the public’s view were many other works of art that were used to adorn the menus of the private dinners of the Omar Khayyam Club of London. Meetings that were held at the end of the 19th century through the first three decades of the 20th. The content of these meetings is summarized in two limited edition, privately-printed hardcover volumes—The Book of the Omar Khayyam Club 1892-1910 and The Second Book of the Omar Khayyam Club 1910-1929. Published by Strangeways & Sons of London, they were made available only to Club members and a few select others.

Figure 1. Title page of Book of the Omar Khayyam Club.

One hundred and eighty-one copies of the first book were printed and one hundred and twenty-five of the second were done. In the two tomes, twenty-eight different artists produced 71 pictures that are covered here for the first time. The books with their modest board covers, quarter-bound in light linen, also contain an abundance of member-written poetry. In addition, lists of Officers and members of the Club as well as their dinner guests and members who had passed on are detailed. The title pages for the two volumes (Figures 1, 2) and a page decoration from the second book (Figure 3) are shown here.

Figure 2. Title of The Second Book of the Omar Khayyam Club.

An Omar Khayyam Club of America was formed in 1900, approximately eight years after the London Club was established. The early history of that group is summarized in the book, Twenty Years of the Omar Khayyam Club of America, Rosemary Press (1921). Its first president was Nathan Haskall Dole who also wrote discourses about Omar Khayyam and the Rubaiyat as well as prefaces for FitzGerald’s translations. The Club cofounder with Dole was Eben Francis Thompson who published his own translations of Khayyam’s poetry as well as writing about Omar. Like the London Club’s publication, the American volume includes poetry and other writings as well as some menu and other illustrations plus page decorations from the Rubaiyat. The club had a Club Medal, Club Seal and, even, a Club Vase. It is believed that the American Club disbanded in the later 1930s.

In contrast, the London Club is still active and continues to hold dinners (omar-khayyam-club.com). Here we focus only on the London Club and its menu artists from 1892-1929.

Figure 3. Decoration from the second book by an unnamed artist.

Before the artistic images are discussed it is important to understand why the Omar Khayyam Club of London was formed in the first place. What motivated a group of highly regarded and important men—and this was clearly a man’s club—to meet regularly to discuss a collection of poems? Despite its name, the Omar Khayyam Club was not formed just to study the Persian poet who wrote the original Rubaiyat but also to pay homage to Edward FitzGerald’s translations of those poems. The dedication to the verses is shown in the requirement for members to dress appropriately, to wear a red rose in their lapel and to only drink red wine during the meal (See Appendix II. Dinner Invitations, Menus, and Publications). Many more details about the menus are covered in Appendix II.

Under the section THE LITERARY CRANKS OF LONDON, an article titled I. THE OMAR KHAYYAM CLUB written by A MEMBER was published on November 23rd, 1893, in The Sketch detailing the origin of the club. During the turn of the 19th to 20th century, The Sketch, was an illustrated weekly magazine that reported on events and people from the aristocracy and high society—what today we might consider the one percenters. As part of this focus, it printed articles and illustrations related to the arts, theatre, and, later, the cinema. The journal published many articles about the Rubaiyat as well as pictures by many artists including Gilbert James. One of Solomon J. Solomon’s pictures that was done for the November 3, 1893, Club meeting menu was used to illustrate the LITERARY CRANKS article.

Around the time the club idea