Elihu Vedder, born New York City - (Illustration for Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám) Death's Review - 1883 - T-Shirt

Elihu Vedder's 1883 plate for the Rubáiyát shows Death looming over a dense crowd of upturned faces, with a panel of lettered verse set above them.

Visual Elements & Composition

The drawing is worked in graphite or chalk with white heightening on a warm grey ground, framed by a black border. A tall, dark composition builds from the lower edge upward: a crowd of hooded children and young women, bearded men, a figure in a turban, and an older man with a pale nimbus behind his head. In the upper left, a skeletal figure in a long cloak holds a staff or scythe-like implement and looks down over the scene. A rectangular panel of hand-lettered verse, opening with large initial letters, sits over the upper middle of the crowd. Its lines include "And fear not lest Existence closing your Account" and "A Moment's Halt—a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the Waste."

Meaning & Symbolism

Death stands above the throng as a reviewer, and the faces below stand for the generations that come and go. The verses speak of the bowl of wine poured by the eternal cup-bearer, of bubbles that rise and burst, and of the caravan that sets out from nothing and returns to it. Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), an American painter who worked for much of his career in Rome, made this plate for his series illustrating the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, published in 1884. The series is known for its dense figure groups and its treatment of mortality, and this plate carries both.

Carried Onto the Tee

A tee is worn close to the body, so the crowd's upturned gaze sits at chest level and reads as the wearer's own company. The tall, vertical composition of the plate lands on the front of the shirt as a single, quiet scene, with the verse panel and the skeletal figure above the throng.