EDWIN LORD WEEKS

An exhibitiion featuring paintings by the prominent American Orientalist painter, Edwin Lord Weeks (1849-1903) was shown at the gallery of Vance Jordan Fine Art, Inc. It included approximately 25 oil paintings, mostly scenes of India that the artist encountered first-hand, including major works loaned from private collections and public institutions.

“A century ago it was reported that the best-known American painters working abroad were James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and two painters of Orientalist subjects – Frederick Bridgman and Edwin Lord Weeks,” Mr. Jordan explained. “Yet Weeks has never been recognized with a major individual exhibition commensurate with his contribution to the history of American Art. In keeping with our tradition of exhibitions highlighting important but little-studied American artists, we have organized an outstanding presentation of Weeks’ work, the most important since his death.”

Edwin Lord Weeks was the scion of an old New England family born in Boston. He arrived in Paris as a young man in the 1870s to train at Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Leon Gerome and privately with Leon Bonnat. In France, Weeks became part of an increasingly noteworthy colony of American expatriate artists and, in competition with natives and foreigners alike, eventually became one of the city’s most celebrated Salonniers.

Weeks’ initial success was founded on his paintings of the Middle East and, in particular, of North Africa were he distinguished himself by accessing regions of Morocco previously closed to Western travelers. Overcoming dangers from famine, disease, and a hostile population, Weeks translated his travel experiences into rich, detailed renderings.

Audiences and critics appreciated the first-hand authenticity of his work and eagerly anticipated the exhibition of each new composition. It was reported in London that even as a young man, Weeks commanded prices equal to that of the city’s most prominent artists.

With this background of success, Weeks undertook his first voyage to India in 1882, opening a field that had been virtually ignored by contemporary painters. “Weeks proved a dedicated, even scholarly, observer of Indian culture and its architectural monuments. He was particularly fascinated with those aspects of ancient Indian life that survived into modern times, and recorded them in scenes that varied from simple street and market settings to elaborate court ceremonies,” observed Dr. Ulrich Hiesinger, American art scholar and author of the Weeks catalog essay. Noted for his books on Childe Hassam and the “Ten American Painters”, among others, Hiesinger has now undertaken a major research project on Weeks, and his essay will be the most extensive publication to date on the artist.

“Weeks had an exceptional eye for detail but his best works display a unique blending of careful, factual recording and deliberate flights of imagination”, continued Hiesinger. “No less than his audiences, who appreciated the vicarious experience of far-off, exotic realms, Weeks himself was personally entranced by the spectacle of Indian life. His works at times suggest an effort to distill the experience of a thousand years of legendary civilization in certain archetypal scenes that continue to fascinate.”

Weeks’ presence in India in the 1880s and 1890s coincided with the height of the British Raj, and it remains both a curiosity and a suggestion of Yankee spirit that it was an American painter who best expressed the romance and splendor of Indian civilization. This fact was duly recognized when Weeks was invited to exhibit a large collection of his works at the Empire of India Exhibition held in London in 1895. He was honored there with a special medal for his contributions and would receive medals and decorations from the governments of France and Germany as well. Even today, after more than a century, Weeks remains the painter par excellence of Victorian visions of India.

The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American Art includes many works of Edwin Lord Weeks in its "Inventory of American Paintings Executed before 1914." Weeks Brick House owns several of Weeks’ portraits, currently on loan to a New Hampshire museum.