The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam pictured by Abanindro Nath Tagore

Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was primarily aimed at British Orientalists of the late-Victorian era. But Abanindranath Tagore’s illustrations, executed between 1906 and 1911—at the height of the Swadeshi movement and the transition of British India’s capital from Calcutta to Delhi—featured his own appropriative use of Persian mystic ideas of transience and transcendence to subvert the narrative of historical time that propped up the colonial cultural hierarchies of his day. The Tagores of Jorasanko were well-versed in Persian poetry and drew from it frequently in tandem with Vaishnav philosophies and Japanese mono-no-aware to inscribe their own interpretive take on what was received in Britain as a pleasing, oriental fantasy. For more information on the book, please see our Collection Stories section.