A. Szyk, C. Roth | The Haggadah, 1940, run-on copy

Arthur Szyk

The Haggadah executed by Arthur Szyk edited and with an introduction by Cecil Roth. [Watford: Sun Engraving Company for] Beaconsfield Press, Limited[, 1940]

4to (284 x 235 mm), unnumbered copy on paper, printed on one side of the leaf and uncut throughout (as the vellum copies), with Hebrew and English calligraphic text in variously coloured inks, fourteen full-page and numerous smaller colour halftone reproductions of Szyk's original watercolour gouaches, including embellished initials, vignettes, and border decorations, later plain black morocco, some wear at corners, slight creasing to a small number of leaves

This Haggadah represents the culmination of a thousand-year-old tradition of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts. Upon its publication, The Szyk Haggadah was described by the Times Literary Supplement as a book worthy to be placed among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has produced. Each individually illuminated text is an example of both extraordinary artistic accomplishment and of profound scholarship. The book was a product of the collaboration between Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), the Polish refugee and internationally acclaimed illuminator, and Cecil Roth (1899-1970), the preeminent British doyen of Jewish history, who edited the text and provided an historical introduction.

Given the unfolding events in Nazi Europe, the Haggadah became, for Szyk, a personal and political statement. Dedicating his Exodus narrative to King George VI (1895-1952), Szyk acknowledged the key role that England, his temporary place of residence, had to play in Jewish survival: "At the Feet of Your Most Gracious Majesty i [sic] humbly lay these works of my hands, shewing forth the Afflictions of my People Israel. arthur szyk [sic], illuminator of Poland". Of his accomplishments, Szyk wrote in French on the page opposite the title: "I am but a Jew praying in art, and if I have worked, if I have succeeded to some degree, if I have been favourably accepted among the elite of society, I owe it all to the teachings, traditions, and eternal virtues of my people".

The book was printed on vellum in numbered 250 copies (125 for sale in Britain, and 125 for sale in the USA) - for one of these vellum copies see previous lot. The current copy is one of "a further (very small) number of copies... produced, as a run-on, on conventional art paper. These copies, distributed amongst the Sun's directors, their families and others involved in the project, were printed on one side of double leaves... just as the vellum version had been printed" (Peter Greenhill and Brian Reynolds, The Way of the Sun, 2010, pp.67-68). Most of these run-on copies are believed to have been bound in brown cloth over boards, although the copy belonging to David Greenfield, General Manager of Sun Engraving, was in the Sangorski and Sutcliffe binding. The current copy, which will have been in the brown cloth, was subsequently rebound.

PROVENANCE:

George Selby Bettle, process prover at the Sun Engraving Company; thence by descent