All techniques are showcased in this delicate and exquisite painting, one of Frank Rosen’s favourites. It was inspired by the haunting and beautiful words from ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' which fired his romantic spirit.

The Rubaiyat is an ancient Persian poem and literally translates as ‘the four line stanzas of Omar Khayyam.’ The poem is the work of two authors who lived several centuries apart. Omar Khayyam, who lived in Persia between 1048CE and 1131CE who wrote the poem in Persian, and Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) living in England, who was the translator of Persian works. In all Fitzgerald produced five version of the poem, the final one of which he published in 1879, and brought the recognition of this mystical poem to the western English-speaking world.

An excerpt from the poem appears here, incorporating in the last stanza, the words ‘And as the Cock Crew’ with which Rosen entitled his painting:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light……….

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before

The Tavern shouted --- "Open then the Door!

"You know how little while we have to stay,

"And, once departed, may return no more."