Untitled (triptych with Sultan and two women), from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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Raised in Berkeley, California, Hanscom studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and, in 1902, set up a photographic studio in partnership with Blanche Cumming. These “illustrations photographed from life studies” are from Hanscom’s 1905 edition of the Edward Fitzgerald translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian Poet c. 1048-1122). It holds a place in both bibliophilic and photographic history as one of the first American books to use photography for fine art illustrations. Hanscom’s friends in San Francisco’s art and literary communities served as the models. The artist, a pictorialist who made her reputation with this book, worked extensively on the dry-plate glass negatives with paint, airbrushes, incising tools and multiple exposures to create the drapery, backgrounds, and effects. It is likely that these prints were produced to be suitable for framing and intended to be sold separately from the book.

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