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Description: | A photograph of two women, one seated in robes the other standing. One of a series of photographic illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (1875-1931) for the 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam As Translated Into English Verse' by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) published in 1905 by Dodge Publishing Company of New York. The photograph was used to illustrate Quadrain XCVIII from the collected poems of the13th century Sufi (Muslim) philosopher, Omar Khayyam (1048-1122). When first translated in the 1880s the poetry was hugely popular in Britain and America. The edition from which this illustration comes was one of the first American books to use photography for fine art illustration. The models are Gertrude Boyle, seated, and Mary Hoard. Leeson manipulated the glass plate negatives and prints by painting, incising and combining multiple exposures to produce the finished prints. Leeson took up photography about 1900, and by 1902 she was being published in the influential photography publication 'Camera Work'. She joined the Photo-Session group of photographers in 1906. She specialised in producing illustrations for books and poems, although most of her work remained unpublished. After the death of her husband in WWI she stopped taking photographs, although she did continue to paint miniatures and watercolours. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ | Subjects: | photograph platinum print | Temporal: | 1905 | Source: | Science Museum | Creator: | Hanscom Leeson, Adelaide (1875-1931) | Identifier: | 2003-5001/2/20525 | Go to resource |
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