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Lot Essay
Between 1882-1893 Edwin Lord Weeks made three long trips to India, taking not only paints and sketchbooks but also a camera, with which he recorded the architecture and landscape of the places he visited. According to his own accounts of the trip, he spent the days painting and sketching, and the nights developing the photographs he had taken to record every detail of his journey. In 1892, Weeks and a journalist, Theodore Child, travelled overland from Trebizond, on the Black Sea, to India, on an assignment sponsored by Harper’s Magazine. The artist produced numerous illustrations to supplement Child’s written dispatches, and eventually published a diary of this epic journey as From the Black Sea to India in 1896. His views of India and Indian life proved extremely popular with French and American collectors and became his particular specialty.
His sketches became an indispensable source of inspiration and information for the compositions he created back in his studio in Paris. Much like Shop Fronts, Ahmedabad or Before the Jami Masjid, Mathura, India, which he reused in later paintings, many of the figures, landscapes and decorative details sketched in the pages of these books were used to create newly imaged scenes. Inscribed with notes on colour and light, the lightly drawn scenes would have helped Weeks conjure vivid recollections of his travels.
Dated from as early as 1872, they provide new insight into the artist’s work in the early 1870's and are also an interesting collection of scenes that create an exciting travel journal. With scenes ranging from snow covered wooded landscapes, to narrow streets of a Persian city; figures and camels in the desert, they are testament to Weeks’ extensive travels, which took him from his native Boston to India and across Egypt, the Holy Land and Persia.
We are grateful to Dr. Ellen K. Morris for confirming the authenticity of this lot which will be included in her forthcoming Edwin Lord Weeks catalogue raisonné.
His sketches became an indispensable source of inspiration and information for the compositions he created back in his studio in Paris. Much like Shop Fronts, Ahmedabad or Before the Jami Masjid, Mathura, India, which he reused in later paintings, many of the figures, landscapes and decorative details sketched in the pages of these books were used to create newly imaged scenes. Inscribed with notes on colour and light, the lightly drawn scenes would have helped Weeks conjure vivid recollections of his travels.
Dated from as early as 1872, they provide new insight into the artist’s work in the early 1870's and are also an interesting collection of scenes that create an exciting travel journal. With scenes ranging from snow covered wooded landscapes, to narrow streets of a Persian city; figures and camels in the desert, they are testament to Weeks’ extensive travels, which took him from his native Boston to India and across Egypt, the Holy Land and Persia.
We are grateful to Dr. Ellen K. Morris for confirming the authenticity of this lot which will be included in her forthcoming Edwin Lord Weeks catalogue raisonné.