December 2008
Born in Boston to a family of spice and tea merchants, Edwin Lord Weeks travelled extensively as a young man. He was initially trained in the United States, but beginning in 1874, he entered the Parisian studio of Léon Bonnat (1833–1922) and was also associated with Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). He continued in the following years to travel in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and India. His Orientalist subjects were then much in fashion, and Weeks became one of the most respected exhibitors at the Paris Salons and enjoyed great fame on both sides of the Atlantic. This early panel is based on sketches that Weeks made during a trip to the Holy Land in 1872. Painted two years later, its treatment of light and shadow seems to reflect some of the lessons that Weeks would have learned from Bonnat, who emphasized the importance of painting out of doors. Much of Weeks’s later reputation would rest, in fact, on his ability to make a scene appear as though having been created en plein air, even though it was painted in a studio and based on sketches made during his travels.
Last Updated: 6/21/2016