?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
ARTHUR SZYK. They Lifted Bad-Al-Din Hasan on Their Wings. Watercolor on paper. Illustration from the 4-volume edition of Arabian Nights Entertainments, Limited Editions Club, New York, 1954. 146x108 mm; 5 3/4x4 1/4 inches. Inscribed (not by Szyk) lower center (illegible): "op: 241-296 / --Nights 20-24 / 'They Lifted Bad-Al-Din Hasan on Their Wings . . . The Tale of Nur-Al -Din / and His Son. / XXX." Tipped to matte, archivally matted and framed.
Born in Lodz, Poland, the great Jewish artist, illustrator and caricaturist Arthur Szyk fled Nazi oppression and eventually settled in the United States in 1940. The precision of his line, the jewel-like colors and meticulous, compact compositions drew greatly on his deep admiration for medieval illuminated manuscripts and Persian miniatures. Like Arthur Rackham's edition of The Wind in the Willows (1940) and Edmund Dulac's The Masque of Comus (1954), Szyk's massive four-volumed The Arabian Nights (1954) was issued posthumously without the limitation leaf signed by the artist.
