Edwin Lord Weeks: An American Artist in North Africa and South Asia

Dana M. Garvey

A dissertation

submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Washington

2013

Reading Committee:

Susan Casteras, Chair

René Bravmann

Stuart Lingo

Program Authorized to Offer Degree:

Art History
©Copyright 2013
Dana M. Garvey
 University of Washington

Abstract

Edwin Lord Weeks: An American Artist in North Africa and South Asia

Dana M. Garvey

Chair of the Supervisory Committee:

Professor Susan Casteras
Art History

Artist, adventurer, travel writer and cultural commentator Edwin Lord Weeks (1849–

1903) was one of America's most celebrated expatriate artists. From the 1870s through the

1890s the Boston native and Paris resident traveled throughout Spain, Syria, Egypt, Morocco,

Turkey, Persia and India, venturing well beyond "the Orient" familiar to many of his professional

colleagues. His scenes of Egypt and Morocco established early successes in France and

America. Travels to India beginning in 1882 inspired a new vision of that region centered on its

monumental architecture, colorful street life and vibrant culture. His fresh, bold images of India

distinguished Weeks from rival American and European Orientalist painters, established his

mature reputation, and brought sustained international acclaim.

The dissertation situates Weeks' life and work in a broad socio-political context. For the

first time, Weeks' reputation as an intrepid "artist-adventurer" is examined relative to critical and
popular reception, the construction of artistic identity, the interdependence of text and image, and

the evolving definition of the modern American artist.

Original research confirms, clarifies and augments Weeks' biography. New analysis

places Weeks at the center of artistic life in 1870s Boston, sheds light on his confusing Moroccan

excursions of the 1870s and early 1880s, and brackets his Indian itineraries of the 1880s and

1890s.

Weeks' enduring associations with the École des Beaux-Arts, Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon

Gérôme are considered in depth. Despite these academic affiliations, Weeks' consistent emphasis

on the effects of sunlight, glare, immediacy and viewer participation indicates that he was

thoroughly immersed in contemporary aesthetic concerns.

Weeks' major paintings of India, exhibited at the Paris Salon and internationally, emerge

as conceptually innovative and transformative when viewed against the long French and British

traditions of visualizing India. Moreover, they may be read as richly layered commentary on

contemporary topics such as architectural preservation and the geopolitics of Central/South Asia.

The cross-cultural circumstances of their production, their integration of French and British

visual and textual sources, and the pervasive backdrop of colonialism reveal Edwin Lord Weeks'

career as a complex transnational project grounded in an American identity and perspective.

 Acknowledgements

My research for this dissertation was greatly aided by the capable staffs of a number of

institutions. For assisting me with special access to Edwin Lord Weeks' paintings and related

archival materials, in particular I would like to thank Mylinda Woodward of the University of

New Hampshire Library, Lauren Silverson of the Portland Museum of Art, Flavie Durand-Ruel

of Durand-Ruel & Cie, Peter Harrington and Robert Emlen of Brown University, and Christine

Braun of the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

I am fortunate to have undertaken my graduate studies at the University of Washington.

The faculty has been most supportive, encouraging and informative. I would like especially to

thank Professors Stuart Lingo and René Bravmann for their reading of the manuscript and

thoughtful comments. My most profound thanks and gratitude go to my dissertation advisor,

Professor Susan Casteras, whose scholarship, depth of knowledge, compassion and reliable wit

remain a constant inspiration.

I must also thank Professor Emerita Anna Kartsonis and Professor Emerita Rosemary

VanArsdel for sound advice, scholarly insights and stimulating conversation.

Of course, any omissions or errors in the dissertation are my sole responsibility.

i
 Dedication

To Jenny, for her tolerance, patience and encouragement. To my sons, for trying to be

still and then racing uncontrollably around the house, for trying to be quiet and then bursting into

fits of giggles, for thousands of interruptions to tie a shoe, kick a ball, make a snack, bandage a

finger, find a sock, read a book. You make it all worthwhile.

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 Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………… 1

Chapter 1 Constructing the Artist Adventurer ………………………………… 14

Chapter 2 Boston Beginnings ………………………………………………… 46

Chapter 3 Professional Training in Paris ……………………………………… 78

Chapter 4 Edwin Lord Weeks in North Africa …………………………………127

Chapter 5 Weeks and the French Visualization of India ……………………...184

Chapter 6 Empire of the Imagination: the British Visual Legacy ……………204

Chapter 7 An American Vision: India at the Paris Salon ………………………256

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………313

Appendix 1 Weeks in The Biographical Dictionary (1906) ………………….…323

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………324

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 List of Figures

Please note: reproductions of the listed images have not been included in the online version of
this dissertation.

Figure 1-1. Unknown, Edwin Lord Weeks, n.d., frontispiece, Edwin Lord Weeks, From the
Black Sea through Persia and India.

Figure 1-2. Edwin Lord Weeks, Untitled. Illustration from Rudyard Kipling, "Kim,"
McClure’s Magazine 16, no. 2 (Dec. 1900): 3. Available from ProQuest American Periodicals,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/135638491?accountid=14784.

Figure 1-3. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Snake Charmers, Bombay, n.d., 18 1/4 x 22 inches.
Private collection. Reproduced in Hiesinger, 69 plate 12.

Figure 1-4. Edwin Lord Weeks, Temple and Tank of Walkeshwar at Bombay, c. 1884, oil on
canvas, 64 1/4 x 45 inches. Private collection. Reproduced in Hiesinger, 63 plate 6.

Figure 1-5. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, William Merritt Chase, 1888, bronze bas-relief.
American Academy and Insitutue of Arts and Letters, New York. Available from Rockwell
Center for American Visual Studies, http://www.rockwell-center. org.

Figure 1-6. John Singer Sargent, William M. Chase, N.A., 1902, oil on canvas, 62 1/4 x 41 3/8
inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Available from http://www.metmuseum.org/
collections/search-the-collections/12471.

Figure 1-7. James Carroll Beckwith, Portrait of William Walton, 1886, oil on canvas, 47 7/8 x
28 3/8 inches. The Century Association, New York. Adler, 20 plate 5.

Figure 1-8. Julian Alden Weir, Self-portrait, 1886, oil on canvas. National Academy of
Design, New York. Available from WikiPaintings, http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/julian-alden-
weir.

Figure 1-9. W. Balch, Edwin Lord Weeks, (c. 1877), photographic print. Private collection.
Digital image provided by Freeman’s Auctioneers, Philadelphia.

Figure 1-10. S. W. Silver & Co., The Typical Explorer’s Suit of Silver and Co., Outfitters, from
John Murray, How to Live in Tropical Africa: A Guide to Tropical Hygiene and Sanitation
(London: The African World, 1895), 223. Reproduced in Ryan Johnson, n.p.

iv
Figure 1-11. Robert Gavin, Mr. Weeks’ Studio at Rabat, 1878. Reproduced in Benjamin, Our
American Artists, 27.

Figure 1-12. After Fernand Lochard, Edwin Lord Weeks. Reproduced in Harper’s Weekly, 13
January 1883, 29.

Figure 1-13. Edwin Lord Weeks, Entering the Taya Pass. Illustration from Weeks, From the
Black Sea through Persia to India, 25.

Figure 1-14. Unknown, Edwin Lord Weeks. Reproduced in Weeks, "Ispahan to Kurrachee,"
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 88, no. 534 (Jan. 1894): 231.

Figure 1-15. Unknown, Selous as a Young Man, In Hunting Costume, photographic print, n.d.
Reproduced in John Guille Millais, Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.S.O. (New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1919), 81.

Figure 1-16. Unknown, Edwin Lord Weeks, photographic print, n.d. Reproduced in Robert
Barrie, My Log (Philadelphia: Franklin Press, 1917), 53.

Figure 1-17. London Stereoscopic Company, Henry M. Stanley, photographic print.

Reproduced in Henry M. Stanley, How I Found Livingstone (London: Sampson Low, Marston,
Low, and Searle, 1872), frontispiece.

Figure 1-18. Unknown, [Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones], n.d. Available from Whip Artistry
Studio, http://thewhipstudio.com/faq.htm.

Figure 1-19. Fortune Louis Meaulle, Henri Meyer, Lieutenant Mizon on His 1892 Mission
of Exploration of the River Benue Area in Nigeria, engraving. Reproduced in Le Petit Journal,
July 1892. Available from The Bridgeman Art Library, http://www.bridgemanart. com/en-US/
search?filter_text=mizon&filter_group=all.

Figure 1-20. Edwin Lord Weeks, Getting Down the Ledge Above the Saddle—Rothhorn.
Illustration from Weeks, "Some Episodes of Mountaineering, by a Casual Amateur," Scribner’s
Magazine 15, no. 5 (May 1894): 544.

Figure 1-21. Edwin Lord Weeks, On the Gallery—near the Rothhorn Summit. Illustration from
Weeks, "Some Episodes of Mountaineering, by a Casual Amateur," Scribner’s Magazine 15, no.
5 (May 1894): 542.

Figure 1-22. Edwin Lord Weeks, A Rest on the Way Down. Illustration from Weeks, "Some
Episodes of Mountaineering, by a Casual Amateur," Scribner’s Magazine 15, no. 5 (May 1894):
543.

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Figure 1-23. Unknown, Edwin Lord Weeks in His Studio Seated before The Hour of Prayer at
the Muti-Mushid (Pearl Mosque), Agra, c. 1892, photographic print. Reproduced in Heritage
Auction Galleries, Fine American and European Paintings and Sculpture, Dallas (2007), as
taken from Arthur Hustin, Salon de 1892, Ludovic Baschet, ed. (Paris, 1892), 55.

Figure 1-24. Unknown, Edwin Lord Weeks. Shown as reproduced in "Famous Parisian Artists
in Their Studios," Booklovers Magazine 3 (Jan.-June 1904): 11.

Figure 2-1. Edwin Lord Weeks, Stephen Weeks, n.d., charcoal on paper, 21 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches
(sight). Private collection. Reproduced in Ganley, 21 note 22 and plate 22.

Figure 2-2. Unknown, Eliot Hall, 234–38 Tremont St., c. 1865, photograph [arrows added by
the author to indicated signage for Stephen Weeks & Co. and the Tremont Gymnasium].
Available from Bostonian Society, Item No. VW0001/- #001253, http://www.boston history.org.

Figure 2-3. Joseph Ward and Son, Horticultural Hall and Studio Building [Detail with Studio
Building], photograph. Available from Bostonian Society, Item No. VW0001/- #001308, http:/
/www.boston history.org.

Figure 2-4. H. F. Walling, Ormando Willis Gray, Map of the Compact Portions of Boston and
the Adjacent Cites and Towns [detail; annotations added], in H. F. Wailing and O. W. Gray,
Official topographical atlas of Massachusetts, from astronomical, trigonometrical and various
local surveys (Philadelphia: Stedman, Brown and Lyon, 1871). Available from David Rumsey
Historical Map Collection, http://www.davidrumsey.com.

Figure 2-5. Edwin Lord Weeks, Florida Everglades, 1871, oil on canvas, 12 x 8 inches.
Reproduced in Barridoff Galleries, 21 plate 15.

Figure 2-6. Edwin Lord Weeks, A Set of Six Sketchbooks, 1872, pencil, watercolor, pen and
ink on paper, 9 1/4 by 6 1/8 inches and smaller. Available from Orientalist Pictures and works of
Art, 13 May 2010, Royal Mirage Dubai, Bonhams, http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/18180/lot/
63/.

Figure 2-7. Edwin Lord Weeks, Moroccan Market Scene, 1873, oil on board, 12 x 9 inches,
Sotheby’s American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 11 March 1999, New York. Available
from Artnet, http://www.artnet.com/artists/edwin+lord-weeks/moroccan-market-scene-
jh2ctVphtR5Z_b7mmHKVzw2.

Figure 2-8. Edwin Lord Weeks, Moorish Bazaar, 1873, watercolor, 25 x 18 inches, lot 85,
Sotheby’s American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 14 March 2001, New York. Available
from Blouin Art Sales Index, http://artsalesindex.artinfo.com/asi/lots/554855.

Figure 2-9. Bhaskar Dasgupta, Bab Zuweila Gate in Cairo, 2010. Available from http://
piquantphotos.blogspot.com/2010/08/photo-essay-bab-zuweila-gate-in-cairo.html.

vi
Figure 2-10. Edwin Lord Weeks, A View on the Nile Near Cairo, 1874, oil on canvas, 32.25 x
51 inches. Shafik Gabr Collection, Cairo. Available from Artnet, http:// www.artnet.com/
magazineus/features/dannatt/dannatt3-17-09_detail.asp?picnum=24.

Figure 3-1. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Dance of the Almeh, 1863, oil on wood panel,
19.75 x 32 inches. Dayton Institute of Art, Dayton, Ohio. Available from http://www.
daytonartinstitute.org/art/collection-highlights/european/jean-lé-gérôme.

Figure 3-2. Jean-Léon Gérôme Pollice Verso, 1872, oil on canvas, 38 x 58.7 inches.
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Leon_Gerome_Pollice_ Verso.jpg

Figure 3-3. Edwin Lord Weeks (attributed), Normandy Farmyard near Honfleur, 1874,
oil on canvas, 12 x 18 inches. Eldred’s Summer Americana and Paintings, 3 August 2012, East
Dennis, MA. Available from Artfact, http://www.artfact.com/auction-lot/edwin-lord-weeks,-
american,-1849-1903,-a-normand-1345-c-38176b9d96.

Figure 3-4. Léon Bonnat, Job, 1880, oil on canvas, 63.3 x 50.7 inches. Musée Bonnat,
Bayonne. Available from Musée d’Orsay, http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections.

Figure 3-5. Léon Bonnat, Self-Portrait, 1855, oil on panel, 18.1 x 14.8 inches. Musée
d’Orsay, Paris. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Léon_Bonat_-_Autoportrait.jpg

Figure 3-6. Léon Bonnat, The Barber of Suez, 1876, oil on canvas, 31.5 x 23 inches. Private
collection. Reproduced in Christine Peltre, Orientalism in Art, trans. John Goodman (New York:
Abbeville Press, 1998), 264. Available from Kunstahalle der hypo-kulturstiftung, http://
www.hypo-kunsthalle.de/newweb/eorientalismus.html.

Figure 3-7. Edwin Blashfield, The Emperor Commodus Leaving the Arena at the Head of the
Gladiators, oil on canvas, 48.5 x 91 inches. Hermitage Museum, Norfolk, VA, http://
hermitagemuseum.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/on-commodus/.

Figure 3-8. Edwin Lord Weeks, Street Scene in India, c. 1884-88, oil on canvas,
28 ⅞ x 23 ¾ inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Available from
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=27287.

Figure 3-9. Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Saddle Bazaar, Cairo, 1833 (?), oil on canvas,
32 x 25 ½ inches. Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA. Available from http://
www.hagginmuseum.org/collections/gerome_saddle_bazaar 2.shtml.

Figure 3-10. Edwin Lord Weeks, A Game of Chess [in (a) Cairo Street], 1879, oil on canvas,
28 9/16 x 39 3/8 inches. Private collection. Available from Bonhams, lot 63, Orientalist Pictures
and Works of Art Dubai, 11 May 2009, http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/17048/lot/63/.

vii
Figure 3-11. Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Draught Players, 1859, oil on poplar panel,
15.7 x 11.3 inches. Wallace Collection, London. Available from http://wallacelive.
wallacecollection.org/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&
objectId=65235.

Figure 3-12. Edwin Lord Weeks, Interior of a Mosque at Cordova, c. 1880, oil on canvas,
56 x 72 9/16 inches. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. Available from http://art.
thewalters.org/detail/22767/interior-of-a-mosque-at-cordova/.

Figure 3-13. Jean-Léon Gérôme, [Public] Prayer in the Mosque [of Amr], 1871,
oil on canvas, 35 x 29 ½ inches, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Available from http:/
/www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110000924.

Figure 3-14. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Last Voyage—Souvenir of the Ganges / Le Dernier
Voyage—Souvenir du Gange , c. 1885, oil on canvas, 75.6 x 113.8 inches. Art Gallery of
Hamilton, Hamilton, ON. Available from http://www.artgalleryofhamilton.com/ex_collect.php.

Figure 3-15. Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Prisoner / Le Prisonnier, 1861, oil on panel, 17 ¾ x 30 ¾.
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Léon_Gérôme_-_Le_Prisonnier.jpg.

Figure 3-16. Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Funeral of a Mummy, c. 1877,

oil on canvas, 44 ⅝ x 91 ¼ inches. Reproduced in Ackerman, 48. Available from Wikimedia
Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Frederick_Arthur_Bridgman_-
_Funeral_of_a_Mummy.JPG.

Figure 3-17. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Excursion of the Harem, 1869, oil on canvas, 31 x 53 inches.
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA. Available from http://collection.chrysler.org/emuseum/
view/objects/asitem/search$0040/0/title-asc?t:state:flow=a515ee71-0f42-435f- 925a-
ccd75c572e4a.

Figure 3-18. Thomas Eakins, John Biglin in a Single Scull, 1874, oil on canvas, 24 ⅜ x 16
inches. Yale University Art Gallery. Available from http://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/
john-biglin-single-scull.

Figure 3-19. Edwin Lord Weeks, Untitled, Graphite on paper. Folder OV1, Edwin Lord
Weeks papers, ca. 1885–1976, Archives ofAmerican Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
DC. Image: author’s photograph.

Figure 3-20. Edwin Lord Weeks, Untitled, Pen and ink on paper/ Folder OV2,
Edwin Lord Weeks papers, ca. 1885–1976, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC. Image: author’s photograph.

viii
Figure 3-21. Unknown, Manikarnika Ghat, Benares, 1880s, photographic print [arrow added
by author]. British Library, London. Available from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/
apac/photocoll/m/019pho0000807s2u00004000.htm.

Figure 3-22. Samuel Bourne, The Burning Ghat, Benares, 1865, photographic print
[arrow added by author]. British Library, London. Available from http://www.bl.uk/
onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/photocoll/t/019pho000000011u00041000.html.

Figure 3-23. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Great Mogul and His Court Returning from the Great
Mosque at Delhi, India, c. 1886, oil on canvas, 33 ⅝ x 54 ¼ inches. Portland Museum of Art,
Portland, ME. Available from http://www.portlandmuseum.org/exhibitions-collections/galleries/
gilded.shtml.

Figure 3-24. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert, 1857, oil on canvas,
25 ¼ x 43 ¼ inches. Private collection. Available from WikiPaintings, http://www.
wikipaintings.org/en/jean-leon-gerome/egyptian-recruits-crossing-the-desert.

Figure 3-25. Los Angeles County Museum of Art Conservation Center, The Great Mogul and
His Court Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India, (c. 1886), raking light,
before treatment. Object file, 1918.1, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME. Photograph
provided to the author.

Figure 4-1. Bill Warren, Warren Map of Africa (detail), in Warren’s Common-School
Geography (Philadelphia: Cowperthwait and Co., 1878), n.p.. Available from Miklian
Antiquarian Maps, www.miklianmaps.com.

Figure 4-2. Edwin Lord Weeks, Moorish Guard, 25 x 13 inches. Private collection.
Reproduced in Hiesinger, 59, plate 2.

Figure 4-3. Edwin Lord Weeks, Fanny, A Portrait of Frances Hale Weeks, The Artist’s Wife
(n.d.), oil on untreated wood, 10 ¾ x 6 ¾ inches. Private collection. Reproduced in Barridoff
Galleries, 29 plate 32.

Figure 4-4. Edwin Lord Weeks, Shepherd on a Hill, Tetuan, 1878, oil on canvas, 23 ⅝ x 34 ⅝
inches. Private collection. Available from Artfact, http://www.artfact.com/auction-lot/edwin-
lord-weeks-126-c-9927efd826.

Figure 4-5. Edwin Lord Weeks, Un embarquement des chameaux sur la plage de Salé, 1880,
oil on canvas, 36 x 61 inches. Private collection. Christies, Orientalist Art, 19th Century
European Art, 25 October 2006. Available from http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/edwin-
lord-weeks-un-embarquement-de-chameaux-4800700-details.aspx?intObject ID=4800700.

ix
Figure 4-6. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Camel Rider, 1875, oil on canvas, 12 x 14 inches. Private
collection. Christies, 19th Century European Art and Orientalist Art, 24 October 2007.
Available from http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/edwin-lord-weeks-the-camel-
rider-4973974-details.aspx.

Figure 4-7. Léon Belly, Pilgrims going to Mecca, 1861, oil on canvas, 63.4 x 95.3 inches.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Available from http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/oeuvres-
commentees/recherche/commentaire.html?no_cache=1&zoom=1&tx_damzoom_pi1 %5Bshow
Uid%5D=110932.

Figure 4-8. Léon Bonnat, Cheikhs arabes dans les montagnes, 1872, oil on canvas, 30.9 x
47.8 inches. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Available from Wikimedia
Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Léon _ Bonnat_-_Cheikhs_arabes_
dans_les_ montagnes.jpg.

Figure 4-9. Edwin Lord Weeks, Chameaux auprès d’une citerne, 1881, oil on canvas,
39 ½ x 77 inches. Private collection. Christies, Old Master and 19th Century Paintings,
Drawings and Watercolors, New York, 26 January 2011. Available from http://www.
christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/edwin-lord-weeks-camels-beside-a-cistern-5403390-
details.aspx.

Figure 4-10. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Bonaparte before the Sphinx, 1867-68, oil on canvas. Hearst
Castle, San Simeon, CA. Available from Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Léon_Gérôme_003.jpg.

Figure 4-11. Edwin Lord Weeks, Open Market, Morocco, 1880, oil on canvas,
18.25 x 30 inches. Private collection. Reproduced in Ackerman, 247. Available from
WikiPaintings, http:// www.wikipaintings.org/en/edwin-lord-weeks/open-market-morocco-1880.

Figure 4-12. Edwin Lord Weeks, Arrival of a caravan outside the city of Morocco, c. 1882,
oil on canvas, 36 x 60.5 inches. Private collection. Reproduced in Ackerman, 24. Available
from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Weeks_Edwin_Lord_
Arrival_of_a_ Caravan_Outside_The_City_of _Morocco.jpg.

Figure 4-13. Eugène Fromentin, Halte de muteliers, Algérie, 1868, oil on panel
18 x 21.75 inches. Christies, 19th Century European Art, New York, 29 October 2003.
Available from http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/print_sale.aspx?saleid=18544.

Figure 4-14. Edwin Lord Weeks, Powder Play City of Morocco, Outside the Walls, 1881-82, oil
on canvas. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/
File:Weeks_Edwin_Lord_Powder_Play_City_of_Morocco_outside_the_Walls.jpg.

x
Figure 4-15. Eugène Fromentin, A Fantasia, (Salon )1869, oil on canvas, 40.75 x 56.5 inches
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Poitiers. Reproduced in James Thompson and Barbara Wright, Eugène
Fromentin (Paris: ACR Édition, 1987), 245. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http:/
/commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fromentin_-_Fantasia.jpg.

Figure 4-16. Edwin Lord Weeks, Type Arabe a Rabat (Maroc) pendant la famine 1879-80, c.
1880-81. Illustration for Mariott, 750.

Figure 4-17. Edwin Lord Weeks, Tête de “Berber, province de Sallée,(Maroc), c. 1880-81.
Illustration for Mariott, 750.

Figure 4-18. Edwin Lord Weeks, Fontaine de bois sculpté dans une ruedu Maroc, c. 1880-81.
Illustration for Mariott, 749.

Figure 5-1. Eugène Fromentin, La chasse au heron, 1865, oil on canvas, 39 x 55.9 inches.
Musée Condé, Chantilly. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia. org/
wiki/File:Chasse_au_héron_Fromentin_ Musée_Condé.jpg.

Figure 5-2. Evremond de Bérard, La Chasse du Rajah (detail), 1851, oil on canvas.
Musée dArt et d’Archéologie, Aurillac. Reproduced in Okada, 14–15.

Figure 5-3. Richard Earlom (after Johan Zoffany), Tiger Hunting in the East Indies, 1802,
stipple engraving, mezzotint and etching with hand coloring on paper, 19 ⅛ x 26 inches (image).
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, CT. Available from http:/
/collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1667179.

Figure 5-4. Samuel Howitt, The Tiger at Bay, 1807, watercolor, 11 3/4 x 17 1/16 inches. Yale
Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, CT. Illustration for Thomas
Williamson, Oriental Field Sports, vol. 1 (1808). Available from http://collections.britishart.
yale.edu/vufind/Record/3660977.

Figure 5-5. The Prince of Wales Tiger Shooting with Sir JungBahadoor: the Critical Moment.
Illustration from the Illustrated London News, 25 March 1876 (coloring added later). Available
from Prof. Francis Pritchett, Columbia University, http://www.columbia. edu/itcmealac/
britishrule/hunting/hunting.html.

Figure 5-6. Charles-Emile Vacher de Tournemine, Chasse Indienne (detail), 1868, oil on
canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille. Reproduced in Okada, 16–17.

Figure 5-7. Charles-Emile Vacher de Tournemine, Une fête dans l’Inde—Lac Sacré
d’Oudeypour (detail), 1870, oil on canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Toulon. Reproduced in
Okada, 18–19.

xi
Figure 5-8. Edwin Lord Weeks, Castle of the Ranas of Oudeypore. Illustration, Weeks, From
the Black Sea through Persia and India, 261.

Figure 5-9. Edwin Lord Weeks, Elephants Drinking—Pichola Lake. Illustration, Weeks, From
the Black Sea through Persia and India, 275.
Figure 5-10. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Gate of Shelah, Morocco, 1880, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 61
inches. Reproduced in Ackerman, 246.

Figure 5-11. Louis Rousselet, Mosquée de Koutub, Delhi, 1868, photograph, 8.4 x 6.5 inches.
Reproduced in Lafont-Couturier and Renié, 9.

Figure 5-12. C. Laplante after Louis Rousselet, The Great Entrance of the Palace of
Oudeypore. Illustration from Rousselet, 160 (opposite).

Figure 5-13. Edwin Lord Weeks, Palace of the Maharajah of Gwalior, Scindia.
Illustration, Weeks, From the Black Sea through Persia and India, 247.

Figure 5-14. E. Therond after Louis Rousselet, The King Pal Palace, Gwalior. Illustration
from Rousselet, 302 (opposite).

Figure 5-15. Edwin Lord Weeks, Gateway of Alah-ou-din, Old Delhi, n.d., oil on canvas
37 ¾ x 27 ½ inches. Christies, Orientalist Art, 15 June 2010, London. Available from http:/
/www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/edwin-lord-weeks-gateway-of-alah-ou-din-old-5326636-
details.aspx.

Figure 5-16. E. Therond after Louis Rousselet, Gate of Alladeen, Koutub, near Delhi.
Illustration from Rousselet, 494 (opposite).

Figure 5-17. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Fort of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, n.d., oil on canvas, 50
⅝ x 34 inches. Christies, 19th Century European Art Including Orientalist Art, 12 June 2012,
London. Available from http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/edwin-lord-weeks-the-fort-
of-gwalior-5576243-details.aspx.

Figure 5-18. E. Therond after Louis Rousselet, Side View of the Pal Palace, at Gwalior.
Illustration from Rousselet, 304 (opposite).

Figure 5-19. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Golden Temple at Amritsar, c. 1890, oil on canvas, 79.5 x
117 inches. Annmary Brown Memorial Collection, Brown University, Providence, RI. Available
from Antiques and Fine Art Magazine, http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/articles/
article.cfm?request=943.

Figure 5-20. C. Laplante after Louis Rousselet, Temple of Umritsur, and Lake of
Immortality. Illustration from Rousselet, 504 (opposite).

xii
Figure 6-1. Tilly Kettle, Muhammad Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot, 1772-76, oil on canvas,
94.1 x 58. 3 inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available from http://collections.
vam.ac.uk/item/O136746/muhammad-ali-khan-nawab-of-oil-painting-kettle-tilly/.

Figure 6-2. James Wales, Madhu Rao Narayan, the Maratha Peshwa with Nana Fadnavis and
Attendants, 1792, 89.9 x 73.2 inches. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London.
Available from BBC Your Paintings, http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/
paintings/madhu-rao-narayan-the-maratha-peshwa-with-nana-fadnavis-a192296.

Figure 6-3. Franz Xaver Winterhalter, The Maharaja Duleep Singh, 1854, oil on canvas, 80.3
x 43.3 inches. Royal Collection, Windsor Castle. Available from Royal Collection Trust, http:/
/www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/403843/the-maharaja-duleep-singh-1838-93

Figure 6-4. Benjamin West, Shah ‘Alam conveying the Grant of the Diwani to Lord Clive,
August 1765, c. 1818, oil on canvas, 114 x 159 inches. British Library, London. Available from
BBC Your Paintings, http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/shah-alam-mughal-
emperor-17591806-conveying-the-grant-of-191206.

Figure 6-5. Thomas Jones Barker, The Relief of Lucknow, 1857, 1859, oil on canvas, 41.5 x
71.4 inches. National Portrait Gallery, London. Available from http://www.npg.org.uk/
collections/search/portraitLarge/mw08481/The-Relief-ofLucknow-1857.

Figure 6-6. Francis Swain Ward, Mausoleum of Sher Shah, Sasaram, Bihar, 1772–73, oil on
canvas, 38.9 x 51.2 inches. British Library, London. Available from BBC Your Paintings, http:/
/www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/mausoleum-of-sher-shah-sasaram-bihar-191202.

Figure 6-7. William Hodges, A View of a Mosque at Mounheer, oil on canvas, 41 x 50.25
inches. Reproduced in Tillotson, 73–74. Christies, Exploration and Travel, 26–27 September
2007, London. Available from http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/william-hodges-ra-a-
view-of-a-4966562-details.aspx/.

Figure 6-8. William Hodges, A Group of Temples at Deogarh, Santal Parganas, Bihar, 1782,
oil on canvas, 27 x 36. British Library, London. Available from BBC Your Paintings, http:/
/www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/a-group-of-temples-at-deogarh-santal-parganas-
bihar-191018.

Figure 6-9. William Hodges, Storm on the Ganges, with Mrs. Hastings near the Colgon Rocks,
c.1790, oil on canvas, 32 2/3 x 50 inches. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection,
New Haven, CT. Available from Bridgeman Art Library, http:// www.bridgemanart.com/en-US/
search?filter_text=hodges+storm+ganges&filter_group=all.

xiii
Figure 6-10. James Moffat, View of a Mosque at Moorshedabad with representation of a Bazar
or Indian Market, 1809, aquatint with etching, 16.5 x 22 inches. British Library, London.
Available from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/other/019pzz00000
0113u00000000.html.

Figure 6-11. Robert Home, The Reception of the Mysorean Hostage Princes by Marquis
Cornwallis, 26 February 1792, 1793, oil on canvas. National Army Museum, London.
Available from http://http://www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection/detail.php?acc=1976-11-86-1.

Figure 6-12. Thomas Daniell, The Chalees Satoon, in the Fort of Allahabad, (made) 1795,
aquatint, 18 x 23.25 inches. From Twenty four views in Hindoostan, drawn and engraved by
Thomas Daniell, and with permission respectfully dedicated to the Honorable Court of Directors
of the East India Company. London, March 1, 1795. Victorian and Albert Museum, London.
Available from http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74896/the-chalees-sotun-in-the-print-daniell-
thomas/.

Figure 6-13. Thomas Daniell, Sculptured Rocks, at Mavalipuram, on the Coast of Coromandel,
1799, aquatint. Antiquities of India, plate 1. British Library, London. Available from http:/
/www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/other/019xzz000004325u 00001000.html.

Figure 6-14. Henry Salt, Daniell Havell, engraver, A View at Lucknow, 1809, aquatint,
Twenty-four Views taken in St. Helena, the Cape, India, Ceylon, The Red Sea, Abyssinia & Egypt.
Government Art Collection, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London. Available from http:/
/www.gac.culture.gov.uk/work.aspx?obj=15399.

Figure 6-15. James Baillie Fraser, View of Court House Street, from near the South-Eastern
Gateway of Government House, 1826, aquatint. Views of Calcutta and its Environs, plate 14.
British Library, London. Available from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/other/
019xzz000000644u00014000.html.

Figure 6-16. George Chinnery, Bengal Village Scene, 1819-21, oil on canvas, 12 ¾ x 16 inches.
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK. Available from http://www.bmagic. org.uk/objects/
1943P287.

Figure 6-17. Charles D’Oyly, engraved by J. H. Clark and C. Dubourg, A Dancing Woman, of
Bengal, Exhibiting before a European Family. Illustration from D’Oyly, The European in India
(London: Edward Orme, 1813), plate 14. Available from Google Books, http:/
/books.google.com/books?id=VNFbAAAAQAAJ.

Figure 6-18. Charles D’Oyly, The Chowsathi Ghat, Benares, c. 1840, oil on canvas. Private
collection. Reproduced in Rohatgi and Godrej, 104 plate 24.

Figure 6-19. William Hodges, Part of the City of Benares, 1787, oil on canvas. Private
collection. Reproduced in Tillotson, 99 figure 37.

xiv
Figure 6-20. Unknown photographer, engraving by George Henry Phillips after George
Duncan Beechey, Hinda, (published) 1835, photograph, 23 ⅛ x 17 ¾. National Portrait Gallery,
London. Available from http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw193669/
Hinda.

Figure 6-21. Horace H. Wilson, Scene in the Zenana at Futtehpore Sikri, 1841, lithograph, 14
5/8 x 10 11/16. Wilson, The Oriental Portfolio, plate 3. British Library, London. Available
from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/other/019xzz000000724u 00003000.html.

Figure 6-22. Thomas Dibdin, lithographer, Gateway at Seringham, 1847, colored lithograph, 12
x 15 7/8 inches. James Fergusson, Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in
Hindostan, plate 23. British Library, London. Available from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/
onlineex/apac/other/019xzz000000472u00024000.html.

Figure 6-24. James Fergusson, Modern Temple at Benares; Diagram Plan of Hindu Temple.
Illustration from Fergusson, 412.

Figure 6-25. William Carpenter, Gateway of the palace at Indore, c. 1852, pencil and
watercolor on paper, 13.8 x 9.7 inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available from
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O108185/gateway-of-the-palace-at-painting-carpenter-william/.

Figure 6-26. Henry Nelson O’Neil, Eastward Ho! August, 1857, 1857, oil on canvas,
36 x 26 inches. Museum of London, London. Available from http://collections.
museumoflondon.org.uk/Online/object.aspx?objectID=object-737945&start=101&rows=1.

Figure 6-27. Joseph Noël Paton, In Memorium, 1858, oil on panel, 48 ⅜ x 37 7/8. Andrew
Lloyd Webber collection. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia. org/
wiki/File:Paton_Sir_Joseph_Noel_In_Memoriam.jpg.

Figure 6-28. Felice Beato, Interior of “Secundra Bagh” after the Massacre, 1858,
Albumen silver print, 9 7/16 x 11 5/16. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Available from
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=105480.

Figure 6-29. William Simpson, Buddhist vihara cave, Ajanta, 1862, pencil, watercolor,
12.4 x 18.8 inches. Victorian and Albert Museum, London. Available from http://collections.
vam.ac.uk/item/O108360/buddhist-vihara-cave-ajanta-painting-simpson-william/.

Figure 6-30. William Simpson, Worship of the Devi at Kothi, near Chini, 1860, pencil and
watercolor on tinted paper, 13.8 x 19.9 inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available
from http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O108365/worship-of-the-devi-at-painting-simpson-
william/.

xv
Figure 6-31. Thomas Daniell, Dasashvamedh Ghat [Dusasumade Gaut], at Benares on the
Ganges, 1795, aquatint, 18 x 23.25 inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available
from http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74898/dasashvamedh-ghat-at-benares-on-print-daniell-
thomas/.

Figure 6-32. Edward Lear, Bathing Ghats at Benares, 1873, watercolor, sepia ink, Chinese
white over graphite on white paper, 13.38 x 19.9 inches. Houghton Library, Harvard College
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Reproduced in Dehejia, 13.

Figure 6-33. Edward Lear, Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling, 1879, oil on canvas, 47 ⅛ x 72
inches. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Available from http://collections.
britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1669302.

Figure 6-34. John Griffiths, The Mid-day Sun—Camels Before a Shrine in Western India,
1868, watercolor, 15 x 24 ¼ inches. Eyre and Hobhouse, 10.

Figure 6-35. John Griffiths, A Drink by the Way: Street Scenein Bombay, 1876,
watercolor, 17 1/4 x 13 inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available from http://
collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O152930/a-drink-by-the-way-watercolour-griffiths-john/.

Figure 6-36. John Griffiths, The Temple Steps, (exhibited Royal Academy) 1893, oil on canvas,
27 ½ x 11 ½ inches. Eyre and Hobhouse, 2.

Figure 7-1. William Simpson, The Mosque Ghat. Benares , 1860, pencil, ink and watercolor,
14.2 x 20.5 inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available from http://
collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O108362/painting-simpson-william/.

Figure 7-2. Unknown, Main (“Expatriate”) Gallery, United States Section [arrow added to
indicate The Last Voyage], Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889. National Academy of Design,
New York. Reproduced in Blaugrund, Paris 1889, 54.

Figure 7-3. William Lamb Picknell, The Road to Concarneau, 1880, oil on canvas, 42 ⅓ x 79
¾ inches. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Available from Bridgeman Art Library,
http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/496828.

Figure 7-4. Edwin Lord Weeks, Return of the Imperial Court from the Great Mosque at Delhi,
in the reign of the emperor Shah Jehan;—XVIIth century, 1886, oil on canvas, 76 x 118 inches.
Private collection. Available from WikiPaintings, http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/edwin-lord-
weeks/the-return-of-the-imperial-court-from-the-great-nosque-at-delhi-in-the-reign-of-shah-
jehan-1886.

Figure 7-5. E. Therond and [?] Hurel after Louis Rousselet photograph, The Jummah Musjid.
Reproduced in Rousselet, 480.

xvi
Figure 7-6. E. Therond and J. Gauchard after Louis Rousselet photograph, Façade of the
Jummah Musjid, Delhi. Reproduced in Rousselet, 481.

Figure 7-7. Unknown, after a sketch by James Fergusson, Great Mosque at Delhi from the
N.E., etching. Illustration from Fergusson, 601.

Figure 7-8. Eugene C. Impey, General View of the Jumma Musjid, Delhi, 1860, photographic
print. Eugene C. Impey, Delhi, Agra, and Rajpootana, illustrated by eighty
photographs (London: Cundall, Downes and Company, 1865). British Library, London.
Available from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/photocoll/g/
019pho000000971u00014000.html.

Figure 7-9. Thomas Daniell, Eastern Gate of the Jummah Musjidat Delhi, 1795,
aquatint on paper, 18 5/16 x 23 1/2 inches. From Thomas Daniell, Oriental Scenery, Part I, plate
1. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available from http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/
O159237/eastern-gate-of-the-jummah-aquatint-daniell-thomas/.

Figure 7-10. Principale rue de Lucknow, capitale du royaume d’Aoude, illustration from
Soltykoff, 152 (opposite).

Figure 7-11. L. H. de Rudder, after drawing by A. M. Saltuikov (Soltykoff), Cortege du Grand

Mogol à Delhi, 1848, lithograph. British Library, London. Available from http:// www.bl.uk/
onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/other/019pzz000000989u00000000.html.

Figure 7-12. Edwin Lord Weeks, A Rajah of Jodhpore, c. 1888, oil on canvas, 56 5/16 x 74
inches. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie. Available from
WikiPaintings, http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/edwin-lord-weeks/a-rajah-of-jodhpur.

Figure 7-13. Mariano Fortuny, Court of the Alhambra (Tribunal de la Alhambra), 1871, oil on
canvas, 28 ½ x 23 ⅓ inches. Doñate, Mendoza, 257, 526. Available from Wikimedia Commons,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mariano_Fortuny_The_Court_of_the_ Alhambra.jpg.

Figure 7-14. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra, 1888–89,
oil on canvas, 99 ½ x 137 inches (framed). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA.
Available from http://www.vmfa.museum/Collections/American_Art/Painting,_Sculpture,
_and_Works_on_Paper/Weeks,_Edwin_Lord_2008_40_Hour_of_Prayer_at_the_Pearl
_Mosque,_Agra.aspx.

Figure 7-15. Edwin Lord Weeks, An Open-Air Restaurant in Lahore, oil on canvas, 62 x 96 ⅔
inches. Private collection. Available from WikiPaintings, http://www.wiki
paintings.org/en/edwin-lord-weeks/an-open-air-restaurant-lahore-1889.

xvii
Figure 7-16. William Carpenter, View of the Mosque of Wazir Ali Khan, Lahore 1856, pencil
and watercolor on paper, 49 ½ x 20 ¾ inches. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Available
from http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O108194/view-of-the-mosque-of-painting-carpenter-
william/.

Figure 7-17. William Henry Jackson, Wazir Khan Mosque in 1895, 1895, photograph.
Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Available from WikiMedia Commons, http://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wazir_Khan_Mosque_in_1895.jpg.

Figure 7-18. Vasili Vereshchagin, Pearl Mosque at Delhi, 1876-79, oil on canvas, 155.5 x
196.9 inches. Private collection. Available from Artnet, http://www.artnet.com/artists/
vasili+vasilievich-vereshchagin/pearl-mosque-at-delhi-mxmoPvuNe1ccY9LGsdRRVg2.

Figure 7-19. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Golden Temple of Amritsar, 1890, oil on canvas, 79 ½ x
117 inches. Annmary Brown Memorial Collection, Brown University, Providence, RI. Available
from Antiques and Fine Art Magazine, http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/articles/
article.cfm?request=943.

Figure 7-20. Kapur Singh, The Golden Temple of Amritsar, c. 1886, oil on canvas, 20 3/4 x 29
3/4 inches. Private Collection. Christies, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, 7 October 2008,
London. Available from http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/the-golden-temple-of-
amritsar-signed-kapur-5125368-details.aspx.

Figure 7-21. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Three Beggars of Cordova, c.1891, oil on canvas, 66 x 98
½ inches. Pennsylvania Academy of the FineArts. Reproduced in William Walton, World’s
Columbian Exposition Art and Architecture (Philadelphia: George Barrie, 1893), 17. Available
from Paul V. Galvin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology, http:/
/columbus.iit.edu/artarch/00164020.html.

Figure 7-22. Unknown, A Fakir's Funeral India, after Edwin Lord Weeks' The Funeral of a
Fakir in Benares, 1892. Reproduced in the Illustrated London News, 22 October 1892, 525.
Available from digital collection of Prof. Emerita Frances Pritchett, Columbia University, http:/
/www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1800_1899/banaras/drawingslater/
drawingslater.html.

Figure 7-23. Julius L. Stewart, On the Yacht “Namouna”, Venice, 1890, oil on canvas, 56 x 77
inches. The Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Available from http://
www.thewadsworth.org/american/?nggpage=5.

Figure 7-24. Edwin Lord Weeks, Barbers of Saharanpore, c. 1895, oil on canvas, 56 ¼ x 75
inches. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE. Available from Wikimedia Commons, http://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weeks_Edwin_Lord_Indian_Barbers_Saharanpore.jpg

xviii
Figure C-1. Edwin Lord Weeks, Arab Gunsmith, c. 1878, oil on canvas, 27 x 32 inches.
Private collection. Reproduced in Hiesinger, 58 plate 1. Available from Wikimedia Commons,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weeks_Edwin_The_Arab_Gunsmith.jpg

xix
 Introduction

Gilded Age American artist, adventurer, travel writer and cultural commentator Edwin

Lord Weeks (1849-1903) was America's foremost painter of the Orient, that shifting designation

that in the Victorian era encompassed all distant points east, southeast and south of Western

Europe. Weeks was a Boston native, the adventuresome son of a prosperous grocer, intimate

with leading artists in the circle of William Morris Hunt. He launched his reputation as a painter

of "the East" while still in his twenties when he set off on the first of several extended tours of

southern Spain, North Africa and the Levant. Like so many prominent American artists of the

post-Civil War generation, he moved to Paris for professional training where he studied in the

studio of Léon Bonnat and probably received guidance from Jean-Léon Gérôme. His scenes of

Morocco, an object of France's colonialist interests, brought him to the attention of French arts

writers, secured an exclusive contract with the canny and influential Parisian dealer Paul Durand-

Ruel, and solidified his international stature.1 However, it was his paintings of India that brought

him sustained transatlantic acclaim. Travels there beginning in 1882 inspired the artist to

embrace a bolder vision of "the East" centered on India's monumental architecture, colorful street

life and vibrant culture. These paintings staked out new artistic territory, established Edwin Lord

Weeks as a mature artist, and continue to define his oeuvre even today.2

1. Paul Durand-Ruel was an early and influential promoter of the Barbizon School, the Impressionists,
as well as a steadfast representative of the Orientalists and the more fashionable academic painters.
Weeks' paintings, hung with works by Claude Monet, Albert Sisley and others, featured in a number of
Durand-Ruel's exhibitions in Paris and New York.
2. Gerard Ackerman, the scholar most closely associated with study of the American Orientalists, stated

1
 Weeks' paintings are in the collections of the Musée d'Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum

of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Walters Art

Museum among other major institutions. Yet, for the better part of a century they have been of

little interest to scholars or collectors, dismissed as either too academic in style or too imperialist

in subject. However, the reevaluation of Victorian painting beginning in recent decades

combined with a concurrent rethinking of the trenchant arguments of literary and cultural critic

Edward Said have raised the visibility of this long-discounted category. Regarding Orientalist

artists, the current thrust of scholarship is to shift the discussion from a master narrative of the

West's domination of the East, articulated by Edward Said, to issues of cultural exchange and

simultaneous, layered meanings. Cogent arguments arising from this new direction rest on in-

depth investigations of intended and unintended political collusions, but also on artists and their

lives, the means, methods and outcomes of production, commercial transactions and public

display, publications and their dissemination, contemporary issues and debates.

Four general objectives inform this dissertation on the life and work of Edwin Lord

Weeks. Because he left no diaries and only a few scattered letters, his early life and influences

have remained obscure, leading to ambiguities and inaccuracies in dating some of his paintings

and in identifying some subjects. Taking on one of the most traditional tasks of the art historian,

that "during his lifetime Edwin Lord Weeks was the most famous American Orientalist," Ackerman,
American Orientalists (Paris: ACR Édition Internationale, 1994), 234. Weeks' rival for this title was
Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847–1928), the subject of Ilene Susan Fort's 1990 dissertation in which she
claims Bridgman was "the most important American Orientalist." Fort, "Frederick Arthur Bridgman and
the American fascination with the exotic Near East," (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1990), 1.
Regardless, the two men were fellow expatriates in Paris, colleagues and friends. Bridgman served as
pallbearer at Weeks' funeral.

2
that of artistic biography, this essay reviews and confirms what has been written by previous

scholars, clarifies confused events and augments the chronology with original research.

That focus on the individual prompted a new inquiry into Edwin Lord Weeks as a

distinctive artistic personality, the "artist-adventurer," an identity that was constructed and

leveraged in the pages of the popular press. Ultimately, this led to an examination of how Weeks

fit into the evolving definition of the modern artist, how he manipulated that definition to suit his

own purposes, and how—despite his expatriate status and academic affiliations—he defined

himself, and was viewed by others, as both modern and American.

Two related but more expansive issues shaped the inquiry. The first questions whether

being "American" and "modern" distinguishes Weeks in the realm of nineteenth-century

Orientalist painting. That is, in a category defined primarily by French and British artists with

academic affiliations, are Weeks' choices regarding subject, theme and style chiefly derivative?

Or do they support a point of view that is identifiably American, or that stands outside of a

nationalist framework, or that introduces a different set of social, political, aesthetic or technical

concerns? Fundamentally these questions probe the network of tensions between influence and

independence. Review and comparison of Weeks' paintings with prior British and French

sources, coupled with a close reading of a variety of contemporary critical and popular texts,

reveals the artist's career as a transnational project grounded in an American identity. Edwin

Lord Weeks' paintings, like his writings, reflect complex and composite interests. As the

following chapters reveal, they are inspired by but independent of European traditions, politically

aware but not politically charged, undoubtedly engaged with current aesthetic dialogues but

distanced from the coalescence of Modernism.

3
 A final, overarching objective was to consider Edwin Lord Weeks and his paintings of

North Africa and India within the context of his own time, without organizing or filtering the

examination of his work chiefly in terms of East-West polarities. For decades the most common

art historical practice has been to view nineteenth-century paintings of "the Orient" primarily as

broad imperialist statements rife with racism, sexism and cultural violation and control, in the

full measure first articulated by Edward Said in his seminal text, Orientalism (1978), and further

expounded by Linda Nochlin, Rana Kabbani and others.3 The compelling analyses of these

scholars was adopted by a legion of followers and has invigorated valuable feminist, Marxist and

post-colonial critiques of art and its power relations. As this cumulative effort restructured the

field, in effect it ejected Victorian painters of "the Orient" en masse from traditional art historical

studies, carved them out from contemporary aesthetic, modernist and social concerns, and

consigned them to footnotes in the sweeping narrative of the West's domination of the East.

Much (but not all) of the latest historical scholarship questions the premise that

Orientalism in the visual arts is necessarily and invariably bound to power, and/or recognizes that

at present there are more promising lines of inquiry. In a presentation for a 2010 symposium on

Orientalist photography held by the Getty Research Institute, Christopher Pinney, who has

written extensively on photography and India, declared that the study of Orientalist relations to

power is now "exhausted." He proposed that it be succeeded by investigations of

"transculturation," "purification" and "autonomy," that is, with investigations of cultural

3. Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," Art in America (May 1983): 118–31, 187–91; Rana
Kabbani, Europe's Myth's of Orient: Devise and Rule (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1986).

4
exchange, of images that purposefully eliminate signs of modern life and technology, and of the

indigenous traditions that adapted and endured despite colonialist interventions. During a panel

discussion on "Re-Thinking Orientalism" (at another Getty Center event) Mary Roberts, who has

written compellingly and frequently on art and empire, called for a "reframing" of the field.

Roberts argued for research that "did not lose sight of political questions" but that emphasized

investigations of cultural encounter and exchange and contemporary histories of production,

reception and consumption.4 At the end of the symposium, architectural historian Esra Akcan

posited that the most promising direction of art historical scholarship lay in the investigation of

the "simultaneity of multiple meanings" of Orientalist images.

This dissertation takes up the direction articulated by Pinney, Roberts, Akcan and others.

It recognizes that the study of Orientalism in visual culture is headed for a multi-perspectival

discourse with scholarship grounded in the idea that images have diverse and layered meanings

that are in conversation with their subjects, with their producers and consumers, with the world

around them and with each other. While remaining theoretically and ideologically engaged, it

reflects a turn away from the polemical vein of postcolonial critical inquiry and a turn towards a

methodological framework that arises from close visual and textual readings of primary sources.

This is not to deny that the complicated geopolitics of Orientalist painting merit deep scrutiny

4. Author's personal notes of talk by Christopher Pinney, "What's Photography Got to Do with It?"
(paper presented at Session I, Theory, Politics and the Orientalist Photograph, "Zoom Out: The Making
and Unmaking of the 'Orient' through Photography," Getty Research Institute, May 2010); author's
personal notes of talk by Mary Roberts, "Re-Thinking Orientalism" (The Getty Center, August 2010).
Roberts, Linda Nochlin and Lalla Essaydi participated in this panel discussion in connection with the
2010 exhibition "The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme" held at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

5
and further research. It is rather to delineate a more modest objective for this dissertation, to

study Edwin Lord Weeks and his paintings in context and to recover some of what they tried to

convey to American and European audiences about a world very different from their own.

This inquiry builds on, dissents from and adds to the work of a number of scholars who

have written specifically about Edwin Lord Weeks. Since his death in 1903 the sum of that work

is comparatively little; only occasionally has Weeks figured into the peripheries of scholarly

inquiry. In 1976, the University of New Hampshire mounted a modest exhibition of paintings by

Weeks which was accompanied by a short booklet introducing the artist.5 At times frustrated by

the lack of material, the author noted “Our research turned up not one word written about him or

his work since the 1920s.” The dissertation corrects some inaccuracies in this publication that

arose from the dearth of materials available in 1976 and the limited research resources available

to the university.

In 1983 Lynne Thornton’s The Orientalists, Painter-Travellers, 1828-1908 covered

Weeks in one paragraph. More insightful was H. Barbara Weinberg's 1983 book, The American

Pupils of Jean-Léon Gérôme, in which she asserts that Weeks was strongly influenced by

Gérôme. The discussion was very brief but influential, later taken up by Annette Blaugrund and

other art historians. Chapter Three explores Weinberg's analysis in depth.

A couple of years later D. Dodge Thompson, now chief of exhibitions at the National

Gallery of Art, penned a feature article on Weeks for the August 1985 issue of the Magazine

5. Kathleen Duff Ganley, The Art of Edwin Lord Weeks (1849-1903) (Durham, NH: University Art
Galleries, University of New Hampshire, 1976).

6
Antiques, a general interest publication.6 Years went by before Weeks resurfaced. In 1994 he

was included (in seven pages of text) as one of the seventy artists' biographies in Gerard M.

Ackerman's American Orientalists. In a wide-ranging essay of 2000, " 'The garments of

instruction from the wardrobe of pleasure': American Orientalist Painting in the 1870s and

1880s," Brian T. Allen asserted that Weeks' paintings were about cultural strength, agency,

vitality and purpose, challenging assumptions about Orientalist artists and themes.7

Steadily Weeks' individualism has emerged. Catharine Y. Becket's 2001 master's thesis,

“Anticipating Edward Said: The Prescient and Sympathetic Nature of Edwin Lord Weeks'

Orientalism” notes that, compared to French Orientalists, Weeks aimed for “more perceptive and

objective interpretations and, in turn, representations of the Orient.” Analyzing Weeks primarily

through the Orientalist narrative developed in the late twentieth century, she observes that the

artist “does not fit so neatly into Said’s Orientalist model” and claims that he presented a

distinctly American point of view.8 This dissertation's conclusions parallel those of Becket as

they venture into a much more wide-ranging discussion of influences on Weeks.

In 2002 independent art historian Dr. Ulrich W. Hiesinger authored a gallery exhibition

catalog, Edwin Lord Weeks: Visions of India.9 This is a well-researched essay that provides the

6. D. Dodge Thompson, "Edwin Lord Weeks, American painter of India," Magazine Antiques 128, no. 2
(1985): 246–58.
7. Brian T. Allen, " 'The garments of instruction from the wardrobe of pleasure': American Orientalist
Painting in the 1870s and 1880s," in Holly Edwards, Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures, Orientalism in
America, 1870–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 59–75, at 67–70.
8. Catharine Y. Becket, "Anticipating Edward Said: The Prescient and Sympathetic Nature of Edwin
Lord Weeks' Orientalism," (master's thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2001), 2, 6.
9. Ulrich W. Hiesinger, Edwin Lord Weeks: Visions of India (New York: Vance Jordan Fine Art, Inc.,

7
highlights of Weeks’ biography and situates Weeks in the broad context of Orientalist art. It is an

excellent overview of the artist, a useful chronological resource and a helpful guide to much of

the directly relevant archival material. A couple of years later Oliver B. Pollack, a professor of

history at the University of Nebraska, argued in a twenty-three page article that Weeks was

fundamentally an apologist for British imperialism.10 Pollack's opinion may be substantiated by

the sources that he cites; however, it may be repudiated using those same sources.

Well after this dissertation was underway Adesola Alabi published online in 2011 "Edwin

Lord Weeks: An Artist's Encounter With British India And The Ideologies of the Raj:

1882-1896," a master's thesis for Christie's Education London. The thesis concludes that

although Weeks expressed "an artistic rather than ideological gaze," his work must be seen as a

part of the imperial project, a topic that is revisited in the conclusion of this dissertation.11

While these authors have resurrected Weeks from scholarly obscurity and provided

valuable information on the artist, to date there has been no comprehensive investigation of

Edwin Lord Weeks' career and paintings. Gaps and errors in the artist's biography have seldom

been researched. Weeks' early career, his life in Boston and association with prominent Boston

artistic circles have been overlooked as important early influences. Conflicting reports of his

2002). The catalog consists of forty-one pages of text and illustrations followed by thirty-nine color
plates. Another nod to Weeks in 2002 was a one-page entry for the catalog After the Hunt: The Art
Collection of William B. Ruger (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002).
10. Oliver B. Pollack, “Edwin Lord Weeks: An American Artist-Writer and Indian Art,” in the Festschrift
Charisma and Commitment in South Asian History: Essays Presented to Stanley Wolpert, ed. Roger D.
Long (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004), 207–30.
11. Adesola Alabi, "Edwin Lord Weeks: An Artist's Encounter With British India And The Ideologies of
the Raj: 1882-1896," (master's thesis, Christie's Education London/University of Glasgow, 2011), 44.

8
training in Paris in the ateliers of Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon Gérôme remained unreconciled.

Published accounts starting from an early "pocket biography" of 1880 left his years in North

Africa, particularly Morocco, a confusing tangle of dates. Moreover, writers have rarely

mentioned Weeks' paintings of Morocco, crucial accomplishments in the crafting of his

international reputation. While in the course of writing on Weeks some have acknowledged the

long tradition of the British visualization of India, none have situated Weeks within the context

of that tradition. Weeks' interest in contemporary and historical writers on India and its culture,

such as architectural historian James Fergusson, travel writer Louis Rousselet and others, has

been considered only superficially. The artist's monumental paintings of India, though certainly

the best known and most popular of his works, have not been analyzed in terms of formal

structure, layered meanings, or contemporary references. Weeks' distinctive identity as an artist-

explorer often has been mentioned but never considered in terms of the broader professional,

social and economic forces operating on late-Victorian artists.

The following chapters tackle all of these issues. Chapter One, "Constructing the Artist

Adventurer," introduces Weeks as he wanted to be known and no doubt remembered. It presents

a new, deeper and expanded understanding of the artist, positioned in the nineteenth-century

popular press as an ideal of American masculinity and modernity. Weeks' public image,

grounded in the Victorian explorer mystique and established in newspapers and widely-read

periodicals like Harper's New Monthly Magazine and Scribner's Magazine, imparted convincing

authority to his scenes of North Africa and India. Methodologically based on the work of Sarah

Burns and Julie F. Codell, this chapter introduces to Weeks scholarship the complex, entangled

issues of artistic identity, celebrity, myth and the market, the interdependencies of text and

9
image, and the creation of cultural capital.

Chapter Two, "Boston Beginnings," pieces together scattered letters, newspaper articles

and unconventional sources such as ward maps, city directories, municipal photography

collections and census records to weave a coherent narrative of Edwin Lord Weeks' family

history and life in Boston. New research places Edwin Lord Weeks at the center of the thriving

artistic life of 1870s Boston and well-connected to the influential circle of William Morris Hunt.

Ambiguous, conflicting and missing data are unraveled to create a plausible account of Weeks'

early travels to Florida, Surinam, Syria, Egypt and Morocco. Key sources include Boston

newspaper reviews of the work spurred by these earliest travels that launched Weeks' reputation

as an intrepid adventurer in search of the authentic.

During the mid-1870s Weeks looked to Europe to advance his training and professional

stature. Chapter Three, "Professional Training in Paris," considers the lure of the École des

Beaux-Arts in Paris, the ambiguities surrounding Weeks' acceptance to the studio of Jean-Léon

Gérôme and his enduring association with Léon Bonnat. The discussion takes up H. Barbara

Weinberg's assertion of Gérôme's prevailing influence on Weeks, probes her comparisons more

deeply, and expands the analysis to include other sources, influences and motivations. The final

section considers comments by nineteenth-century critics Robert Sherard and R.A.M. Stevenson,

who observed in Weeks' paintings a powerful individualism in conception and execution, and

positioned him with James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent as among the most

advanced American artists.

Chapter Four, "Edwin Lord Weeks in North Africa," considers the artist's journeys to and

interpretations of the region that popularized his romantic artist-adventurer persona, impressed

10
French and American critics with his daring and distinguished him from many of his Orientalist

colleagues. The first third of the chapter describes in brief the complex European and American

interests in the region, a necessary context for considering the charged political environment that

backgrounded the conception, production and reception of the work. Next, new information

further documents the artist's travels and sheds some light on his confused Moroccan chronology.

Excerpts from French accounts demonstrate the contemporary reception of Weeks' paintings as

achievements gained by a rare combination of an individual vision, raw courage and dogged

perseverance. The concluding discussion considers how Weeks both colluded with and

questioned France's colonial entanglements.

After Weeks first went to India in 1882, he pivoted away from Morocco and turned

almost exclusively to Indian and Persian subjects. The next two chapters widen the view to

examine the French and British traditions of visualizing India. The purposes of these chapters

are twofold: first, to situate Weeks in the context of this long European tradition and second, to

serve as a prelude to the concluding discussion of the artist's major paintings of India. The work

of Edwin Lord Weeks is best understood as a distillation of the French and British traditions of

depicting India, though filtered by the experiences of an independently-minded, sophisticated

American immersed in a competitive, transatlantic artistic milieu. His paintings are stylistic

composites, produced at the intersection of multiple cultures and histories. Chapter Five, "Weeks

and the French Visualization of India," and Chapter Six, "Empire of the Imagination: the British

Visual Legacy," set forth the French and British artistic vision that informed and inspired Edwin

Lord Weeks' panoramic scenes of Indian life.

11
 Against the backdrop of the British and French traditions the conception and presentation

of Edwin Lord Weeks' major paintings of India in the 1880s and 1890s emerge as innovative,

transformative, category-shattering. Chapter Seven, "An American Vision: India at the Paris

Salon," discusses how Weeks' Indian-themed contributions to the Académie des Beaux-Arts

staked out new artistic territory, cemented his international reputation and continue to define his

oeuvre. New sources and approaches that previously have not been applied to Weeks' paintings

are employed to dissect and contextualize the works in light of viewer experience, paintings by

other artists, aesthetic concerns such as the "glare effect" and references to then-current issues

such as architectural preservation and the geopolitics of Central Asia. The final pages touch on

Weeks' declining reputation at the end of the century as American critics and patrons increasingly

demanded art and artists with pronounced, undiluted ties to their native land.

The arguments and analyses presented in these chapters rely as much as possible on

primary sources. Admittedly these are rather scarce. Pursuit of them, and related research in

archives and museum vaults, took me to the British Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, Tate

Britain, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Thomas J. Watson Library, Brooklyn Museum,

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Walters Art Museum, Virginia

Museum of Fine Arts, University of New Hampshire, Portland Museum of Art (Maine),

Annmary Brown Memorial and Brown University Library, the Getty Research Institute and J.

Paul Getty Museum, Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University, Yale Center for British Art,

and the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada.12 Although I did not travel to Paris the staff

12. To develop additional background for the dissertation the author attended the 2008 exhibition "The

12
of the Musée d'Orsay were helpfully responsive. Durand-Ruel & Cie, the Paris-based gallery

that had an exclusive contract with Edwin Lord Weeks, provided to me a copy of the artist's file

from its archives.

This research has only confirmed that, to the extent nineteenth-century Orientalism in the

visual arts has garnered the attention of scholars, that attention has been focused primarily on the

work of French and British artists. Although the most recent exhibitions and re-appraisals of

Orientalist painting have been multi-national scholarly collaborations, they have continued to be

defined, and arguably constricted, by this narrow focus. It is time to expand the inquiry to artists

with other personal perspectives, national—and, in the case of Weeks, transnational—interests.

Weeks' depictions of the panorama of life in the "Orient," especially of Morocco and

India, demonstrate that he approached these cultures with a point of view and purpose that

differed from those of his European contemporaries even as it drew from European sources.

Complicated then as now by the pervasive backdrop of colonialism, they are works of art and

historical documents subject to a multiplicity of meanings. Their interpretations are layered and

sometimes contradictory. They may been seen as simultaneously innovative and stubbornly

conventional. But always the cross-cultural circumstances of their production and reception

reflect the collective curiosities, failings and unresolved tensions that characterized Edwin Lord

Weeks and his times, and that resonate in our own.

Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, 1830–1925" at the Yale Center for British Art, and toured
the same exhibition at the Tate Britain as well as attended the Tate's June 2008 symposium, "Orientalism
Revisited: Art and the Politics of Representation."

13
 Chapter One

Constructing the Artist Adventurer

Edwin Lord Weeks, son of a prosperous Boston grocer, was lauded as the preeminent

American painter of the "Orient" by more than one late-nineteenth-century art critic (Figure 1-1).

Famous on both sides of the Atlantic, charming and urbane but with a knack for landing in

perilous situations, he was also the Gilded Age embodiment of a nascent American archetype, the

adventure hero. Weeks constructed this unlikely but memorable public personality—an

improbable Indiana Jones, wielding a brush—from his earliest years as a professional artist.

It is no exaggeration to state that Edwin Lord Weeks shaped the visual understanding of

the "East" for hundreds of thousands of his contemporaries. Over the course of his three-decade

career Weeks traveled for months at a time through what is now Spain, Lebanon, Syria, Israel,

Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India. His scenes of North Africa and India

became familiar to audiences across the United States and Europe, from the exhibitions of small

galleries fronting Boston Common to those of the Royal Academy, the Paris Salons, the 1893

Chicago World's Columbian Exposition and the Munich Succession. Showman Imry Kiralfy

devoted a gallery to seventy-five of Weeks' paintings and sketches of India in his 1895 Empire

and India Exhibition that opened in London's sprawling Earl's Court, drawing a half-million

people.1 Weeks' illustrations of crowded cafés, colorful weddings, princely processions, cliff-top

1. The exhibition offered a commemorative booklet of Weeks' paintings, Life and Scenes in India from
original oil paintings by E. L. Weeks (London: T. F. Robey and Co., n.d.). Among those displayed were

14
palaces, lumbering elephants, barbers, soldiers and street vendors of "the East" enlivened the

pages of periodicals such as Scribner's Magazine, Harper's Monthly, La Vie Moderne, Figaro

Illustré, and books like Constantinople (1895) by the popular and prolific Francis Marion

Crawford and Weeks' own travelogue, From the Black Sea through Persia and India (1895/6).

So well known were his scenes of India that he was selected to illustrate the initial serial

publication of Rudyard Kipling's landmark novel, Kim, that first appeared in McClure's and

Cassell's magazines beginning in 1901 (Figure 1-2).

In all of his work, Weeks strived to achieve a highly convincing portrayal of places most

Americans and Europeans had only heard or read about, but that he had experienced first-hand.

His efforts extended beyond the typical Eastern exotica that invariably found its way into so

many mundane Orientalist paintings of the period—the dancing women, the obligatory hookahs,

the snake charmers, the crumbling façades of once-glorious monuments. Occasionally Weeks

did employ these common signifiers, with predictable results (Figure 1-3). But he also aimed

higher. He sought to present the astounding richness, vitality and dignity of North African and

Indian culture against a backdrop of magnificent architecture, penetratingly observed and

precisely rendered. Enveloping all of these efforts was his obsession with capturing brilliant

sunlight glaring off of whitewashed walls, reflecting from stretches of sand, creating a pulse of

heated atmosphere completely foreign to most European and American audiences (Figure 1-4).

several of the artist's major works, listed in the booklet as: The Last Voyage; The Emperor Shah Jehan
Leaving the Great Mosque at Delhi; The Funeral Procession of a Fakir; The Moti Masjid, or Pearl
Mosque, of Agra at the Time of Prayer; and An Open-Air Restaurant at Lahore. These paintings are
discussed further in Chapter Seven.

15
 Compelling as many of his paintings are, by themselves Weeks' vibrant images of the

Eastern panorama formed only a part of his reputation as an artist. Critics and the public

invested Weeks' images with an authenticity that stemmed from their perception of the artist's

character and their knowledge of the experiences that formed it. The performative aspects of

Edwin Weeks' life set him apart from many of his contemporaries and helped to distinguish his

work in the broader Orientalist field.

Without question, Weeks' exploits made stimulating reading. From his earliest notices in

Boston newspapers, his accomplishments in the aesthetic arena were inextricably linked to his

reputation in print as an ambitious young American artist who was hell-bent to venture well

beyond the comfortable expatriate enclaves of Cairo, Tangier and Bombay. For Edwin Weeks

text, vision and reputation were always interdependent, mutually amplifying and career

sustaining, as suggested in two passages below, the first written about Weeks and the second by

him:

. . . When they were finally able to crawl out, reduced almost to skeletons from
the terrible sickness which they had endured, the whole party was nearly drowned
crossing the river from Sallee to Rabat at night during a freshet. After another
interval of waiting, attended by several other hair-breadth adventures, the
travellers finally succeeded in escaping in a dirty English brig, which took them to
Tangier; but they came very near being swamped and losing their lives when
landing there in a storm.
But Mr. Weeks was well rewarded for the perils which he had undergone. He
had seen antiquities of Carthaginian and Roman origin which no foreigner had
ever beheld before. He had gazed with enthusiasm and astonishment upon
specimens of Saracenic architecture equalling the far-famed halls of the
Alhambra, and hitherto as little known out of Morocco as if they were in the
moon, and he had brought away with him studies gained at the risk of his life, of
which the results have since appeared in noble paintings displayed in the leading
exhibitions of London and Paris.

* * *

16
 These preliminary lines of explanation are only to show why this journey was
undertaken at such an unfortunate moment, and that there was some underlying
method in its apparent madness. When the route was first mapped out, it was our
intention to follow the line of the Trans-Caspian Railway to Samarcand, and
thence to Herat, and through Afghanistan to India. But the political situation and
the civil war in Afghanistan rendering such a trip hazardous, we decided to take
the trans-Persian direction, and to enter Persia near Meshed . . . With permission
from the War Department to visit Central Asia came an urgent telegram from the
American legation at St. Petersburg, advising us not to go on account of the
cholera, which, after devastating Meshed, had left Persia and invaded the Russian
provinces . . . This time we elected to follow the old caravan route from
Trebizond, on the Black Sea, to Tabreez, through the mountains of Kurdistan, that
country of indefinite boundaries.
In short, there was no other route left open to us; we must either turn back or,
setting our faces forward, head straight for the Persian frontier, five hundred miles
away, and we decided to go on.2

The first of these excerpts is from a chapter of S.G.W. Benjamin's Our American Artists,

which recounted Edwin Lord Weeks' harrowing adventures during the devastating 1878 famine

in Morocco. The second is from the foreboding preface of Weeks' 1896 From the Black Sea

through Persia and India, a travelogue of the arduous 1892 journey on horseback that claimed

the life of his companion, the English arts writer Theodore Child, and nearly took Weeks' own.

As these two passages relate the lived experience behind Weeks' paintings, they also reveal the

essence of the subject's public character. It is the artist's biography cloaked as adventure story,

the artist packaged as the heroic product of a pragmatic, spirited, irrepressible post-Civil War

America.

2. S[amuel] G[reene] W[heeler] Benjamin, Our American Artists (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1881),
30–31; Edwin Lord Weeks, From the Black Sea through Persia and India (New York: Harper and
Brothers Publishers, 1896), preface. In this essay all references to Weeks' From the Black Sea are to the
1896 publication. (Though a review dated November 1895 indicates that there may have been a late 1895
printing.)

17
 This dimension of Edwin Lord Weeks' career, the leveraging of myth with an eye to the

market, has been largely overlooked for the past hundred years. Indeed, for most of the twentieth

century not one word appeared in print about Edwin Lord Weeks or his paintings. Fifty years

after his death in 1903 at age fifty-four, his reputation was in tatters; Gilded Age Orientalists held

little interest for Atomic Age art historians and collectors. Having no apparent reason to hold

onto it, in 1956 the Metropolitan Museum of Art deaccessioned one of Weeks’ largest (76 x 114

inches), most inventive and acclaimed paintings of India, The Last Voyage—Souvenir of the

Ganges, singled out as "audacious" and "some of the most striking work of the year" at the 1885

Paris Salon (Figure 3-14).

Edwin Weeks’ widow, Fannie, withheld The Last Voyage from the 1905 estate auction to

bestow upon the museum and the nation a gift befitting the memory of her famous husband.

When Fannie made this magnanimous gesture, Edwin Weeks was renowned on both sides of the

Atlantic, described by early documentary filmmaker Burton Holmes as "not only a painter, he is

a traveler, an explorer, and an enthusiastic Alpinist," and the London Times as "the student of art

and of manners, viewing the characteristics of Indian and Anglo-Indian life with Western

sympathies, but from the independent point of view of an American observer."3 An

unquenchable taste for adventure and a confident, independent "Americanness" were the dual

perceptions that came to define Edwin Lord Weeks.

3. Burton Holmes, Burton Holmes Travelogues, vol. 2 (New York: McClure Co., 1901, 1908), 64; "Two
Books of Travel," Times (London), 29 November 1895, 14 col. A.

18
 Fannie's husband's reputation was built on more than his merit as an accomplished artist,

trained in the most prestigious ateliers, applauded by critics and welcomed in heady social

company. From every public angle, Weeks presented the fin-de-siécle masculine ideal: intrepid

adventurer, devoted husband, enthusiastic sportsman, thoughtful cross-cultural observer,

stimulating writer, traveler to exotic lands. By popular account the swarthy, wiry, five-foot-eight

Weeks was virile, intellectually curious, scrappy and courageous—the kind of Gibsonesque male

"of sympathetic nature and indomitable pluck" who could navigate, with the same Yankee

sensibility, a diplomat’s Parisian soiree or a North African sandstorm.4 He was the Gilded Age

New Man, the very embodiment of American modernity.

Weeks' public image, crafted in magazines like Scribner's and Harper's Monthly,

provided context for his work and gave viewers a reason to believe in the veracity of the scenes

he depicted. In Edwin Weeks the professional and the personal were intertwined, echoed and

embellished in the press, though not in the typical fashion. Weeks inhabited public space at the

farthest remove from Postlethwaite, Maudle and other late nineteenth century caricatures of

effete, buffoonish artists who appeared in cartoons that mocked their exaggerated sensitivities

and the Victorian art world's social pretensions. According to the French illustrated weekly La

Vie Moderne, Edwin Lord Weeks was a member of that exclusive club, "les peintres

explorateurs," more Henry Morton Stanley than James McNeil Whistler. This categorization

imparted a special value to the scenes of the "East" that Weeks brought before European and

4. F. D. Millet, Works of the Late Edwin Lord Weeks, Important finished pictures, sketches, studies and
drawings (New York: American Art Galleries, 1905), "sympathetic nature and indomitable pluck,"
preface.

19
American audiences, a value that rested as much on the artist's reputation for physical courage

and stamina as on exotic content and engaging style.

Modern art historians have tended to disregard these aspects of Weeks' career, relying

instead on his Orientalist subject matter, early style and Paris training to lump him together with

the French Academic painters. However, Weeks never bore that association in his own time or in

his own mind. From the very outset, Weeks was determined to redraw the boundaries of the

artists’ profession in a way that suited his adventuresome nature. As subsequent chapters will

discuss, he undoubtedly was inspired by French and Spanish masters Jean-Léon Gérôme and

Léon Bonnat, but he was not hobbled by them. Weeks crafted his own brand of Orientalism,

starting with a highly individualized definition of himself.

Artists and Masculinity in the Later Nineteenth Century

Beset by pervasive social and political changes that swept the country in the immediate

years after the Civil War, Americans—especially men—of Edwin Weeks' generation faced a

particularly unsettling time. The war had devastated untold numbers of homes, families and

livelihoods. The collective social and political strength of white males was threatened by the

Reconstruction Amendments that abolished slavery, extended the privileges and protections of

citizenship and granted voting rights to former slaves. The Fifteenth Amendment, which

prohibits the federal or state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race,

color or previous condition of servitude, reignited the women's suffrage movement and led to

increasingly vehement demands for the vote, education, equal pay, property rights and full legal

recognition. Weeks was in his early twenties when the Panic of 1873, precipitated by an

20
international drop in the price of silver and Germany's abandonment of the silver standard,

aggravated by a railroad investment bubble and rising interest rates, caused a run on banks and a

severe depression that lasted until 1879. Although Edwin Weeks' father's prosperous Boston

grocery insulated the young artist from the downturn's more dire effects, across the country over

a hundred railroads failed; striking workers faced federal troops; businesses collapsed by the

thousands; unemployment shot up.5 Overall, it was a period with political, economic and class

tensions acutely reminiscent of our own time, fraught with parallel issues concerning the social

constructs of gender.

The shifting foundations and definitions of masculinity in post-war America confounded

the role and identity of artists. In the later nineteenth century, leaving behind the drafty garrets

and doffing the velvet jackets, artists began to present themselves as modern men of affairs,

competent in business dealings, socially adept, disciplined, unsentimental and financially

successful. Contrary to the artists of today, who are often positioned as "outsiders" intent on

stretching or rending the social fabric, the artists of Edwin Weeks' time were intent on

bootstrapping themselves up the socio-economic ladder. Sales were bolstered by proper dress, a

well-appointed studio in a prestigious location and a formidable education. Professional

achievement was measured in terms of income and juried awards as well as acceptance to

exclusive private clubs and highly sought invitations in the post. In Inventing the Modern Artist:

Art and Culture in Gilded Age America, art historian Sarah Burns noted:

5. Martin A. Berger, Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood
(Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 10.

21
 Attempting to gain secure status and promote their cause, artists maturing after
the Civil War had to reinvent the image of the artist as one of practicality and
civic responsibility to match the new roles they hoped to play in modern America.
Artists and critics insisted on the businesslike qualities of modern American art,
characterized by "a generally high order of technical ability and artistic sanity, a
general temperance and discretion." 6

Though many, perhaps most, American artists gravitated to a more business-like

presentation of the self, post-war artistic identities remained fluid and artistic appearance

somewhat variable. William Merritt Chase, the exact age of Edwin Weeks, affected a broad

sartorial range, from floppy tie, loose-fitting belted smock and pom-pom topped tam-o'-shanter

in 1888; to suave man-about-town in evening dress, top hat and black cloak in 1891; to the

flourishing mustache, cream waistcoat and tie that lent him the air of the successful, if a tad

flamboyant, banker in 1902 (Figures 1-5, 1-6).7 A certain intriguing panache (a luxuriant

mustache or casually held cigarette) was permitted, even expected, but any association with

effeminacy, degeneracy, or Aestheticism was not.8 In the later years of the century any flaunting

of the borders of gender, closely associated with the Aesthetic Movement and circle of Oscar

Wilde, was viewed as particularly corrosive.

In part as a reaction against Aestheticism, for their public selves, American artists

typically sought to project a tidy professionalism and assured, comfortable manliness. This is

6. Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America (New Haven,
London: Yale University Press, 1996), 35.
7. William Merritt Chase, 1888 bronze relief by Augustus St. Gaudens and Walter T. Smedley's William
Merritt Chase in Charles De Kay, "Mr. Chase and Central Park," Harper's Weekly 35 (2 May 1891),
mentioned in Burns, 20, 22; William M. Chase, N.A. by John Singer Sargent (1902).
8. Burns, 35.

22
evident in the familiar photographs of the distinctively neat, natty and mustachioed Winslow

Homer, the casual pose captured by James Carroll Beckwith's Portrait of William Walton (1886),

J. Alden Weir's intense and skeptical Self-Portrait (1886), and the cabinet card photograph of a

carefully groomed (therefore disciplined and respectable) Edwin Lord Weeks (Figures 1-7, 1-8,

1-9). This photograph is the earliest known picture of Weeks, taken when he was in his twenties

and already a well-established artist.9 Sarah Burns calls this assemblage of dress, accessories and

slightly aloof demeanor the "corporate appearance," designed to communicate professional

competence, social conformity and superior status.

However, even as conformity in dress generally held the many staves of artistic

personality in rough alignment, discouraging any flirtation with an outward Aestheticism, it led

to a dull predictability. The "corporate appearance" dampened experimentation and competing

patterns of expression. A balance was required, one that struck a bargain between individual

expression and some form of social or cultural responsibility.10 It was imperative for the

ambitious American artist to forge an array of traits—creativity, manliness, robust health and

rigorous discipline—into a coherent identity and to cultivate it in the public realm. In pursuit of

this professional narrative artists vaulted into the media where the performative aspects of their

lives competed with, and commented on, the works themselves.

9. A digital image of the cabinet card photograph of Weeks was obtained from Freeman's Auctioneers,
Philadelphia, who had dated it to 1900. However, W. Balch, the photographer, was active in Boston from
1873 to 1878, per the Massachusetts Historical Society, which indicates an earlier date for the photograph.
It is nearly identical to the portrait reproduced in S.G.W. Benjamins' Our American Artists (1881), 29.
10. Burns, 38, 109.

23
The Media-Generated Artistic Personality

After the Civil War newspaper and magazine circulations exploded, primarily because

technological innovations drove down production costs. In the early 1860s newspaper stock was

twenty-five cents a pound in the United States. By 1897 it was two cents a pound and falling.

The firm of S. D. Warren of Boston built the largest paper mill in the world in the 1870s to

supply paper to periodicals like Youth's Companion and Atlantic Monthly. A major customer, the

Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, was one of the first periodicals in the U.S. to employ the

halftone process for illustrations, an 1885 innovation that relied on the acres of smooth surface

paper provided by Warren. For these surging periodicals advertising revenues climbed steadily

as the burgeoning network of railroads integrated far-flung communities into one giant magazine

market. As readership expanded geographically and demographically, content of popular

magazines shifted away from poetry, literature, criticism and formal essays towards reporting of

current events, light fiction and articles about travel and adventure.11

Magazines devoted to art retained relatively small and specialized audiences, but the

mass-marketed "general interest" journals of the late nineteenth century—Harper's, Munsey’s,

McClure’s, Collier’s—had combined circulations in the millions.12 Popular magazines and all

large metropolitan newspapers had regular features and often daily columns on the fine arts that

covered the latest exhibitions in America and abroad. In the 1860s the New York Tribune's art

11. David Reed, The Popular Magazine in Britain and the United States 1880-1960 (London: The
British Library, 1997), 27, 28, 50–51.
12. Matthew Schneirov, The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America 1893–1914
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 11.

24
critic Clarence Cook and, decades later, the Boston Evening Transcript's William Howe Downes

carved out new space as respected, insightful guides for the general public and essential reading

for the cognoscenti.

With the vigorously expanding book and magazine industry eager to satisfy aspiring

middle class readers, a mutually beneficial relationship developed between publishers and artists

eager to tap broader audiences. As the publishing industry stoked reputations, determined

canons and constructed personalities, so artists learned to manipulate media appearances to their

own advantage.13 Artists were quick to seize opportunities for publicity and to make them where

none had existed. They flattered critics with personal notes, sent well-disposed reviewers small

“thank you” canvases and welcomed reporters and photographers into their lavish studios, all

with the aim of snagging a well-placed mention or better yet, a feature article. By frequently

appearing in high-circulation newspapers, journals and heavily marketed books—either as

subjects, authors or illustrators—artists dramatically increased awareness of their work and

burnished their public images as authoritative figures.

Canny publicity became a hallmark of a new kind of artist celebrity, his or her character

an amalgam of multiple sources—the artist, the work, critics, pocket biographers, dealers and

social columnists. Accomplishments and characteristics featured in popular accounts and critical

reviews transferred to interpretations of the meaning and value of the work and declarations on

the worthiness of the artist. Artist and work product became one nearly indistinguishable

commodity, fused in popular print. This was of no small import for artists' careers, for an 1892

13. Burns, 2.

25
survey concluded that American periodicals exercised “an almost incalculable influence upon the

moral and intellectual development of individuals, upon home life, and upon public opinion.

[Their] great increase and improvement may be regarded as one of the most important signs of

the times.”14

In the later Victorian era the artist/product fusion became a commodity implicitly

invested with purposes beyond those associated with the individual artist: to position artists as

appropriate role models for young adults, to educate the middle and civilize the working classes,

to inspire patriotic and poetic feeling, to express beauty and refined sentiment, to foster stable

social relations over disruptions. Therefore, an artist with the right kind of identity—the artist

who could meet these various demands with admirable flair—had considerable leverage to

accrue cultural capital and to exchange it with popular publications, with reciprocal credibility

benefits. The successful modern American artist was part individual talent, skill and

determination, part media invention. Edwin Lord Weeks worked assiduously on all parts.

Have Pith Helmet, Will Travel

It was a tall order to craft a believable, coherent public image that was at once manly,

creative, wholesome, daring, disciplined, intriguing, respectably domestic, sufficiently European

and still unquestionably American. Faced with the pervasive and defining "corporate

appearance," how was an aspiring American artist to construct a unique, complex identity that

14. Burns, 11, quoting Emma Helen Blair, Andover Review 18 (August 1892): 154, as cited in Mott,
History of American Magazines, 1885-1905, 14.

26
could define the man, elevate the work, and ratchet a career from the modest galleries on Boston

Common to the grand halls of Earl's Court? For Edwin Lord Weeks, a pith helmet was the

answer.

Edwin Weeks engineered a self-image, textual and visual, grounded in the Victorian

explorer mystique, a natural complement to his North African and Indian preoccupations. Weeks

the Intrepid was not a wholesale invention. He did indeed travel extensively in North Africa,

British India and the Levant, occasionally in rough, dangerous circumstances far beyond the

tracks familiar to most of his fellow Orientalist painters. If the perils he faced were not quite of

the Allan Quartermain kind, he really did come close to death more than once, and it all made

good copy.

As an instantly recognizable symbol to associate the Anglo-American with scenes of

exotic adventure, not much can compete with a pith helmet, save maybe a whip (Weeks had one

of those, too). The pith helmet, or sola topi (topee), de rigueur for Victorians traipsing through

hot climates, was the signature traveling accessory of the American or European in the East. Due

to its outsized symbolic value and the firm conviction that failure to wear a topi would inevitably

result in sunstroke for the fair-skinned, it was critically important to possess the correct pith

helmet, with full brim, high crown, ventilation and in current fashion. Particularly in India only

the right topi proclaimed social correctness and British identity, as a former missionary recalled

some decades after Weeks traveled in that country: “The topi was a fetish; it was a tribal symbol.

If you did not wear a topi you were not merely silly, you were a cad. You were a traitor . . . You

27
had gone native.”15

Beyond its practical, mundane uses (to shield supposedly vulnerable European

constitutions from deleterious climates), the pith helmet and other special tropical clothing

affirmed Western identity, distinguished colonizers from colonized, and instilled a sense of

intellectual superiority over local inhabitants. However, even as it enveloped the wearer in a

literal and figurative shield against disease and degeneration, at the same time it signaled a

departure from the safe, secure, civilized world. It was associated with the brave, heroic and the

masculine, from Burberry's advertisements ("The only safe wear for tropical climes") to John

Murray's 1895 guide, How to Live in Tropical Africa (Figure 1-10). Tropical clothing marked a

border, but also recognized that a border had been crossed. It suggested adventure and danger,

far from the safe and civilized streets of London, Paris, or Boston.16

For Edwin Lord Weeks the pith helmet was a recurrent visual association. S.G.W.

Benjamin's 1881 essay on Weeks led with a half-page drawing of the artist seated on a camp

stool in Norfolk jacket and buttoned gaiters, en plein air, sketching a squatting figure and camel,

pith helmet firmly in place (Figure 1-11). The helmet, full beard and curling mustache dominate

the portrait sketch that appeared in Harper's Weekly of January 13, 1883, accompanying a write-

up on the artist and an engraving of his painting A Public Fountain in the City of Morocco

(Figure 1-12). In an 1893 illustration from the first in a nine-part series by Weeks for Harper's

15. Francis A. de Caro and Rosan A. Jordan, “The Wrong Topi: Personal Narratives, Ritual, and the Sun
Helmet as a Symbol,” Western Folklore 43, no. 4 (Oct. 1984): 233–48 at 237.
16. Ryan Johnson, "European Cloth and 'Tropical' Skin: Clothing Material and British Ideas of Health
and Hygiene in Tropical Climates," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Fall 2009): 530–60.

28
Magazine that chronicled his ride over Persia's mountainous caravan routes and on to India, the

distinctive headgear likewise signaled to readers the author's bona fides (Entering the Taya Pass,

Early Morning, Figure 1-13). The third article in the series, "From Ispahan to Kurrachee,"

begins with a quarter-page portrait of Weeks likely updated from the 1883 file photo, pith helmet

pulled low over his forehead, the air of authority unmistakable (Figure 1-14).

In these images Weeks' facial hair shared near equal prominence with his pith helmet.

Although by the 1890s long whiskers began to fall to other markers of masculinity, with many

younger "sporting men" opting for a display of muscles and a clean shaven look, they were still

undeniable symbols of elemental masculinity, vitality, hardiness and authority. Particularly for

those engaged in strenuous endeavors in deleterious climes, it was believed that a vigorous beard

and mustache protected against infections borne by unhealthful air. For the British Camel Corps

soldier or European big game hunter, the beard was a symbol of primitive manhood, of beating

the odds, of brutal existence seized from unforgiving nature or defended from unsparing foe

(Figure 1-15).17

To further this not-too-subtle identification, occasionally Weeks suited up with a full

complement of adventure regalia to promote his artist/explorer identity, seen in this studio

photograph dating to probably the early 1890s (Figure 1-16).18 The casual grasp of the sola topi

17. Christopher Oldstone-Moore, "The Beard Movement in Victorian Britain," Victorian Studies 48, no. 1
(Autumn 2005): 7–34.
18. This undated photograph was likely given to publishing scion Robert Barrie when he was working in
Paris in 1893 and had come to know Weeks. Robert Barrie, My Log (Philadelphia: Franklin Press, 1917),
53.

29
in the left hand, whip in the right; the cartridge box with revolver holstered at the hip; the

wrinkled riding breeches tucked in worn leather boots; the nonchalant stance and direct gaze; the

scattered ornamental rugs and pillows define Weeks as an updated Henry Morton Stanley (Figure

1-17). Born in Wales, the journalist Stanley was a naturalized American citizen whose

indefatigable, 700-mile trek through dense forest in pursuit of Dr. Livingstone was inked across

every major American and British newspaper. As a twenty-one-year old in 1871, like many

Americans Weeks no doubt eagerly awaited dispatches detailing Stanley's progress and marveled

at his perseverance, likely ignorant of or disregarding Stanley's reputation for extreme brutality.

With his sobriquet Bula Matari, "Breaker of Rocks," Stanley's fierce engagement with

the world was much admired in America and Britain during the burgeoning colonial era. Writers

praised his "perseverance," "dauntless spirit of enterprise," and fortitude in carrying out "duties

so manfully performed."19 One female journalist observed that Stanley was able to succeed

where others had failed because of "his firmness and decision of character, [to] the exercise of

these manly virtues." Moreover, Stanley did it all in the name of America as his 1872 account,

How I Found Livingstone, makes clear. The book's full-page depiction of the critical "Dr.

Livingstone, I presume" moment features Stanley tipping his pith helmet to the doctor, just as the

explorer steps beneath a fluttering American flag, held aloft by one of his bearers.20

19. Edward Berenson, "Charisma and the Making of Imperial Heroes in Britain and France, 1880–1914,"
in Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Edward
Berenson and Eva Giloi (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), 33 quoting Edinburgh Review,
October 1890, 372 and Queen, the Lady's Newspaper, 8 February 1890.
20. Henry M[orton] Stanley, How I Found Livingstone; Travels, Adventures and Discoveries in Central
Africa (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle, 1872), 413.

30
 Weeks tapped into this emerging trope in American mythology.21 Its late-twentieth

century apogee is perhaps the familiar Indiana Jones character first introduced in the 1981 film

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Figure 1-18). In the series, fearless archaeologist Dr. Jones exchanges

university tweeds and horn-rimmed glasses for a battered hat and bullwhip, slashes through

jungles, survives seething pits of vipers, outwits sinister Nazis and other nemeses of America, all

to rescue some precious artifact and the requisite hapless female from horrible fates in untamed

Africa, Asia and South America. Dr. Jones' "adventure quest" is an inescapably colonialist

concoction in which personal ambitions and the rivalries of Western nations are played out

against the backdrop of an exoticized, backwards "Orient," with the American nineteenth-century

mantra of Manifest Destiny in full throttle as a guiding principle.22

Weeks' Gilded Age identity readily fits in with this kind of American adventure

protagonist, real or fictional. He routinely left the comforts of his large, well-lit studio and the

crowded cafés, boulevards and galleries of Paris in order to bring back, purportedly at the peril of

his own life, authentic views of a world little known to the West. In a stroke, the artist-as-

21. Tim Prchal, "The Bad Boys and the New Man: The Role of Tom Sawyer and Similar Characters in
the Reconstruction of Masculinity," American Literary Realism 36, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 187–205. Mary
Blanchard points out that the counterpoint to the aesthete, patterned after Oscar Wilde, was the more
visible and persistent American ideal, the soldier/citizen. This characterization was overlaid on other
cultural heroes emerging post-Civil War: the assertive entrepreneur, the frontier warrior, the Populist
rebel and even union agitator. Blanchard asserts that Aestheticism in America "could not have been a
popular movement without the Civil War," as it offered an alternative construction of manhood to the war-
weary. Mary Blanchard, "The Soldier and the Aesthete: Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Gilded
Age America," Journal of American Studies 30, no. 1 (April 1996): 25–46.
22. See generally, James Chapman and Nicholas J. Cull, “Calling Dr. Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981),” in Chapman and Cull, Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (London, New
York: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 169–85.

31
adventurer public image achieved four things, all with especial appeal to Weeks' financially

successful male patrons. It most definitely set Weeks apart from his refined rivals in Europe and

America, consciously posed in dark suits, starched collars, and pince-nez. For Weeks’ European

audience, it recalled the exploits of their own soldier heroes, men like General Gordon, Sir

Garnet Wolseley, Lieutenant Antoine Mizon (Figure 1-19) and the French-Italian Pierre

Savorgnan de Brazza, its undeniable imperialist overtones hinting at European colonialist

sympathies. In America, it worked to promote Weeks as a rough and ready individualist, self-

reliant and worldly, just when the United States was beginning to press more forcefully in

foreign affairs. Above all, it stamped Weeks’ representations of the East with a badge of

authenticity—truth guaranteed by the authority of the pith helmet.

Like Sherlock Holmes’ well-known traveling cap, the pith helmet did not have to be

continually atop Weeks’ head to accomplish its symbolic purpose. It was an intermittent visual

cue amplified by early and consistent textual characterizations of the artist. For example, S.G.W.

Benjamin's 1881 essay led with "If Mr. Weeks had not chosen to be an artist by profession he

would have been an admirable explorer. Enthusiastic in temperament, he craves adventure with

a zest equal to that with which he paints a picture . . ."23 The October 1, 1881 issue of Le Gaulois

described Weeks venturing into the Moroccan interior "souvent au péril de sa vie." Taking a cue

from Benjamin, La Vie Moderne's November 19, 1881 double-page spread on Weeks was

entitled "Les Peintres Explorateurs: Edwin Lord Weeks." An 1890 auction catalogue claimed

that, of all the painters of remote regions of the Orient, "the most noteworthy of these

23. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 27.

32
exceptional adventurers is Mr. Weeks."24

This characterization of the artist persisted throughout his career, augmented by Weeks'

own writings. His most famous trip, plotted with British art critic Theodore Child over drinks at

the boisterous Café Americain in Paris, provided the grist for a series penned by Weeks in 1893–

94 for Harper's Magazine that was published subsequently as From the Black Sea through

Persia and India. In the autumn of 1892, from Trebizond on the coast of the Black Sea, the pair

began the trek on horseback over the ancient caravan routes leading from Turkey to Persia.

Threading narrow defiles, scrambling over wild passes and around steep, crumbling mountain

paths, Weeks and Child lived an adventure straight out of Boys' Own Life magazine. The first

few Harper's Magazine articles that recounted the journey were replete with allusions to mortal

peril: campsites that were "a fitting background for robbery and assassination;" thieves betrayed

in the night by "the ripping sound of the knife;" an engrossing conversation with the chief

executioner of Ispahan. Always understated, Weeks nonetheless portrays himself as wary and

tough ("My first impulse is to draw my revolver; and Carapet, in his wrath, slips off the cover of

my rifle and reaches it out for me"); kind but unflinching ("the poor brute [wolf] has a broken

leg, and is dragged reluctantly along by a rope tied about his muzzle; knowing that he is doomed

to die by slow torturers, I ask permission to finish him with a rifle ball"); resilient ("we ride

through a stratum of air like the breath of a furnace. Yet the pocket thermometer held on the

saddle seldom shows more than 105° Fahr."); and dutiful ("my friend died as we were carrying

24. American Art Association, Catalogue of the Private Collection of Modern Paintings belonging to Mr.
Walter Bowne (New York: American Art Association, 1890), 30.

33
him by easy stages to Julfa").

This last reference was to the death of Theodore Child. For two months the pair had kept

all manner of threats at bay only to ride straight into a raging cholera epidemic. Their desperate

efforts to avoid quarantined areas were of little use. With grim reserve, Weeks and Child each

survived bouts of cholera and managed to press on. But not long after, Child succumbed to

typhoid and died before Weeks could get medical help, forty miles away. After bringing his

friend's body back to Julfa, Weeks eventually made it to the Persian coast, took a steamer to

Kurrachee, and traveled from there throughout India. It was a journey that Child had instigated,

convincing Weeks to come along as illustrator for a series on "Living India" contracted for

publication by Harper's Magazine. It was only after Child's death that Harper's engaged Weeks

to write and illustrate the planned series.25

The reinforcing circularity of artist image, confirming text, and exotic subject projected a

tightly woven construction of artistic identity and authenticity, crafted in the media and translated

to the market. However, in Weeks' case it was grounded in fact. A letter from Theodore Child to

his Harper's editor (who had pleaded with him not to go to Persia on account of the dangers)

conveys something of the harsh reality and compelling novelty of Weeks' experience:

It is a hard life we are leading, exposed to all the elements, burning sun in the day,
cold at night, fearful wind, blinding dust, thieves too, and kicks from horses. The
other day Weeks got a fierce kick on the thigh, but he managed to get over it. At
Zendjan where we camped at the gates of the town thieves came in the night . . .
but all this bad luck and hard work is compensated by the beauty and novelty of

25. Henry Mills Alden to Edwin Lord Weeks, 3 February 1893 and Harper and Brothers [unknown editor]
to George A. Lucas, 2 March 1893, reprinted in James Henry Harper, The House of Harper: A Century of
Publishing in Franklin Square (New York, London: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1912), 594–96.

34
 the country and the people. Nothing has yet been published about Persia that
gives any idea of it. Weeks is enthusiastic. He paints at sunrise; he paints at
sunset; and even when he goes to bed he continues—painting his nose with
vaseline . . . We are gathering heaps of material, and the little ride from the Black
Sea to the Persian Gulf will, I hope, be found interesting by Mr. Alden and the
public. There are not many people who have done it; and, rough as it is, it is
worth doing. There is literally no end of material for illustration, and all different
from anything either of us has ever seen in any country or any book.26

Alternate Identities

Edwin Lord Weeks cultivated a public image of manly fitness, physical courage, strength

and stamina in other arenas, as well. He was an avid cyclist who covered the fifty miles or so

between Paris and Vernonnet with apparent ease.27 Weeks was known to spar with that "ardent

votary of the tennis-court," American artist Frederick Arthur Bridgman, on the lawn across from

Bridgman's studio.28

Besides mastery of the more prosaic sports, during these years Weeks also gained a wide

reputation as an accomplished alpinist. As with his more recognizable "explorer" image, he

burnished his mountaineering reputation in the pages of the popular press. His sketches were

featured in the Scribner's article "A Thousand Miles Through the Alps"29 by Sir William Martin

26. Theodore Child to James Henry Harper, 2 October 1892, Teheran, reprinted in James Henry Harper,
The House of Harper: A Century of Publishing in Franklin Square (New York, London: Harper and
Brothers, Publishers, 1912), 592–93.
27. "What Prominent People are Doing in France," New York Times, 16 November 1902, 4.
28. Ishmael, "American Artists on the Seine," Illustrated American 6, no. 34 (11 October 1890): 97–101,
at 100.
29. W. Martin Conway, "A Thousand Miles through the Alps," Scribner's Magazine 20 (July–Dec. 1896):
28–43.

35
Conway, "a graphic account of a tour that is unique in the history of mountain-climbing . . .

illustrated by Edwin Lord Weeks, who is himself a famous mountain-climber."30 Weeks would

have had much in common with the learned Conway, prolific writer and leader of exploring and

mountaineering expeditions who became Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge in 1901.

Weeks also wrote and illustrated his own articles on mountaineering, including "Varallo and the

Val Sesia" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine May 1898 issue; "The New Switzerland" for

Harper's June number of 1897; and "Some Episodes of Mountaineering, by a Casual Amateur"

in the May 1894 issue of Scribner's Magazine.31

Many of Weeks mountaineering-themed sketches depict a closed masculine world of

bracing athleticism, daring and camaraderie: roped together on a sheer face of rock; clinging

triumphantly to a summit, supported by the merest toehold; enjoying a well-deserved pipe

(Figures 1-20, 1-21, 1-22). Despite the perils made plain by Weeks' illustrations, his text

downplays the danger just often enough to leave the reader marveling at the author's skill and

steely resolve, as hinted in this excerpt from "Some Episodes of Mountaineering":

Among the minor peaks (minor, not in regard to size or interest, but in difficulty
only) the Rimpfischorn and the Gran Paradiso, are ranked as difficult. Both of the
these peaks exceed the Jungfrau in height [13,642 feet; a main summit of the
western Swiss Alps], and although care and attention are necessary at certain
points, there is not the slightest difficulty about either of them. A noted Alpinist
records that he has ascended the Gran Paradiso alone and without guides. There

30. "Notes and Announcements," Publishers' Circular, no. 1565 (27 June 1896): 695.
31. Edwin Lord Weeks, "Varallo and the Val Sesia," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 96, no. 576 (May
1898): 905–20; "Some Episodes of Mountaineering, by a Casual Amateur," Scribner's Magazine 15, no. 5
(May 1894): 531–53. "Some Episodes" was reprinted in Edward L. Wilson, Edwin Lord Weeks, et al,
Mountain Climbing (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897).

36
 is one point, however, where most men would feel safer with a rope and at least
one guide. A practised expert whom I met on the way down affirmed that it was
hardly worth doing, while another, equally experienced, had made the ascent
twice.32

Though "most men" might want a rope and a guide, Weeks apparently eschewed such assistance;

for him "there is not the slightest difficulty" in scaling these 14,000 or so foot peaks. Weeks'

reading on the toughness meter creeps ever higher as he discusses whether the peaks and passes

may be considered sufficiently arduous to be worth the trouble and expense of climbing them.

Although he points out from time to time that "unless one is extremely quick and clever" the

incautious climber is likely to get himself in a desperate situation, the overall tone is one of

marked self-confidence.

His article "The New Switzerland" is more sober. One lengthly passage gives an account

of a climber discovered "lying at the foot of the grand couloir; the other, still fast to the rope,

which had caught on the rocks, hung in the opening of the crevasse;" their bodies brought down

the mountain "corded to poles and wrapped up like mummies in rough canvas."33 Despite this

ominous beginning, Weeks and his party gamely ascend in the very footsteps of those who had

just lost their lives. When they reach the site of the dead climbers' demise, Weeks muses:

one might imagine that a desperate struggle for foothold had taken place . . . for
two men, however skilful, might easily lose their traces in descending,
particularly in bad weather; and even now a slight deviation of a foot or two on
either side might have ensured a rather sudden descent to the glacier.34

32. Weeks, "Some Episodes Of Mountaineering," 532.

33. Weeks, "The New Switzerland," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 95, no. 565 (June 1897): 3–18, at
10.
34. Weeks, "The New Switzerland," 13.

37
But these meditations are brief. Brushing aside the momentary reminder of mortality, undaunted

Weeks continued up the mountain.

These passages fully evoke not only Weeks' own daring, but also the new attitude towards

mountaineering, which in the Victorian era had evolved from an invigorating pastime that

connected one with nature and the sublime (the mood, for example, of Caspar David Friedrich's

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818) to a rigorous sport that pitted man against rock.

Character development and physical competence, the goals of the late-nineteenth century cult of

physical culture, were the lessons to be gained from danger and hardship. William Martin

Conway, author and president of the Alpine Club, described them as follows:

Such struggles with nature produce a moral invigoration of enduring value. They
wash the mind free of sentimental cobwebs and foolish imagining. They bring a
man in contact with cold stony reality and call forth all that is best in nature.
They act as moral tonics.35

Mountaineering as moral tonic would have appealed to Weeks and his wealthy patrons. Its

manly connotations were powerful antidotes to any perceived weakness inherent in the artistic

personality as well as to dissipations associated with the artist's profession or with life in Paris,

where Weeks had long resided.

Mountaineering's efficacies extended to the intellectual realm. Quantification of

distances and heights, precise mapping and geological inquiry all set mountaineering in a new,

logical, decidedly modern, and mostly male context. Serious alpinists dismissed the mere

35. Alan McNee, " 'Cold Stony Reality': Subjectivity and Experience in Victorian Mountaineering,"
Dandelion 2, no. 2 (2011), n.p., citing William Martin Conway, The Alps from End to End (London:
Archibald Constable, 1895), 174.

38
physical accomplishments of amateurs seeking bragging rights:

Alpine climbing is no mere gymnastic exercise like rowing, but a large and
comprehensive sport, wherein the whole nature of man can find stimulus and play.
It is not an exercise for the muscles and the nerves only, but for the reason and
imagination as well.36

Mountaineering, properly met in body and mind, was a sport that honed and invigorated a man's

physical, intellectual and moral vitalities. Women of course participated, their displays of

outstanding physical capability often accompanied by "intrepidity of demeanor in the presence of

danger calculated to alarm the strongest of men."37 Nonetheless, it was the hearty male that

reaped the publicity benefits.

For charismatic appeal a demonstrated ability to negotiate hostile deserts and scale lofty

precipices was all well and good, but the successful, fully rounded Gilded Age artist needed an

even broader repertoire of character. Of course, a painter's reputation was most closely bound to

the work itself, which had to garner a generous share of critical accolades, awards and prominent

placements at prestigious exhibitions. But it was also necessary to project a personal image of

professional success, urbane refinement and—in the late nineteenth century—prowess in the

domestic sphere. To this end Weeks, like many of his colleagues, used his lavish, prop-filled

studio to advertise his work as well as to mold his public persona.

Julie F. Codell notes that in the Victorian era artists' "Homes and studios became rich

36. McNee quoting William Martin Conway, ‘Centrists and Excentrists’, Alpine Journal 15, no. 112
(May 1891), 397–403, at 401.
37. "In Ladies' Company," Literary World, n.s. 45 (Jan.–June 1892): 608.

39
symbols of artistic moral and national character, reaching the status of fetishized spaces."38 Well-

appointed studios were markers of social and financial success, aimed squarely at impressing

clients and critics. When photographed for feature articles in popular magazines, artists' studios

operated in more covert ways to position the artist in society. A lavish studio attached to the

home anchored the artist in the domestic realm, banishing the moral ambiguities associated with

live models and suspect bohemianism. Walls crowded with books, plaster casts piled atop

shelves, travel memorabilia, rugs and fine furniture validated the artist's life experiences and

proclaimed his place in history. A studio overflowing with tools, materials and paintings in

various stages of completion verified the value of the artist's labor and asserted his

professionalism. The combined effect was to demystify the artistic process and normalize it

within a safe, domestic context. Visitors, either in person or through the pages of a magazine,

were invited to scrutinize (and thereby regulate) the site of cultural production, to determine

whether the artist's workplace and home met professional standards and the equally important

values of domesticity, propriety and comfort.39

Edwin Lord Weeks unquestionably met those criteria via the published photographs of

his home studio, "glowing with the tints of Ind and Araby."40 In A. Hustin's Paris Salon de 1892

a dapper Weeks seated on an ornate but no-nonsense straight-backed chair puts the finishing

38. Julie F. Codell, "Constructing the Victorian Artist: National Identity, the Political Economy of Art
and Biographical Mania in the Periodical Press," Victorian Periodicals Review 33, no. 3 (Fall 2000):
283–316, at 293.
39. Julie F. Codell, The Victorian Artist: Artists' Lifewritings in Britain, ca. 1870–1910 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 46–48, 57–58, 61.
40. Ishmael, 100.

40
touches on The Hour of Prayer at the Moti Mushid (The Pearl Mosque), Agra, his 1889 Salon

submission (Figure 1-23). Beneath his feet, the tiger hide hints at exotic travel and victorious

confrontations with big game, a compelling dimension to the poised figure whose clothes and

posture are equally crisp.41 Here Weeks exemplifies the modern Euro-American professional at

work, a sharp contrast to the languid figures depicted in his painting.

A more relaxed version of Weeks in his "handsome studio in Paris" was featured in the

April 1893 issue of The Art Interchange (Figure 1-24). Even lounging crossed-legged on a

divan, the artist appears fully in command of the professional and domestic spheres. His studio

is quite orderly, but not too symmetrical and tidy, which might detract from its masculine aura by

signaling the reign of the conscientious wife rather than the duties of the housekeeper.42 Dozens

41. "Although artists complained to critics and editors of their exertion in the studio, images of them 'at
work' were thoroughly socialized and genteel; sweat and strain were airbrushed away. Artists were not
besmattered with paint but appeared dressed for social occasions in their studios, so that the body of the
artist at work was really the body in social life, not the body at work." Codell, The Victorian Artist, 62.
42. Of Frank Dicksee's studio, C. Lewis Hind wrote that, in addition to having such manly accoutrements
as exercise equipment, Dicksee's studio boasted "A workroom of good size, with examples of old tapestry
on the walls, a cast of a fragment of the Parthenon frieze at the further end, Oriental lamps hanging from
the ceiling, dark wood cabinets, an organ . . . and here, there, and everywhere those curios an artist picks
up in his wanderings. The studio is somewhat less orderly and methodical than the studios of the German
painters we have been noticing. There is about it a suggestion of bachelor comfort—letters open on the
table, a little dust where it should not be, an absence of fresh-cut flowers, and that general tout ensemble
betokening the reign of the housekeeper." C. Lewis Hind, "Painters' Studios," Art Journal, n.s. 52 (1890):
11–16, 40–45, 135–39 (first of a three-part series on German and English ateliers). On a similar theme art
critic Clarence Cook wrote: "It must not be forgotten that the charm of an artist's studio such as those of
Mr. Chase, Mr. Shirlaw, or Mr. Tiffany, is due to the owner's horror of conventionality, and his feeling for
unity and harmony, and so long as these are obtained, and his eye fed and kept in tune, he does not care
for the intrinsic value of his belongings, nor is it necessary that apple-pie-order should reign supreme."
"Casts and Tapestry in Room Decoration," Monthly Illustrator 4, no. 14 (June 1895): 323–28, at 327–28.

41
of paintings, evidence of professional achievement, are hung on and propped against every wall.

On the easel, facing the tiger hide spread across the floor, is his 1888 Salon entry, A Rajah of

Jodhpore. A Persian lamp hangs from the ceiling; the carved latticework of mashrabiya

dominate the upper gallery. A wall display of carefully arranged weaponry, typical of Victorian

museums and upper class homes, frames the artist as it associates him with both his patrons and

the soldier/scholar ideal.43 The Art Interchange author, "an eminent art critic resident in New

York," observed that when "This painter of Indian and other Oriental climes" returns to his

European studio:

he is enabled to put all these impressions and studies together and produce
elaborate compositions that apparently have been painted directly from nature and
art in the blazing sunshine of Jetnan or Delhi. . . In all these countries he has
found themes which have appealed to his temperament, and which he has
translated for the benefit of the curious untraveled with great cleverness and
technical ability, and in a mood that apparently hesitates between the frankly and
brutally realistic and the judiciously poetical.44

The author unified the artist's character and work product, finding in each a forceful appreciation

of visual truth tempered by admirable restraint, ennobled with a dash of romanticism. The studio

photograph reinforced all of that for the contemporary viewer; the "trophies of his travels" were

simultaneous proofs for the reader and aids to the artist that enabled him to "conjure up again, on

the banks of the Seine, the life of the Ganges and the Jordan." A skeptical reader might have

43. On the soldier-adventurer, and on masculinity in the domestic sphere, see Graham Dawson, Soldier
Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London, New York: Routledge,
1994), 58–65. On Victorian trophy displays, see Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums,
Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven,
London: Yale University Press, 1994, 1997).
44. "Edwin Lord Weeks," Art Interchange 30 (April 1893): 94–96, at 94.

42
questioned Weeks' technical ability (and the author does: "the painter draws well, but not

impeccably;" "his compositions, though natural, are not strikingly original"), but not the

authenticity or sincerity of the artist or the work.

This particular photograph was apparently widely circulated, for it was reproduced in the

October 19, 1895 issue of the London weekly Black and White (atop a half-page image of Weeks'

The Last Voyage) and again in the April 1904 issue of The Booklovers Magazine. The latter

picture-article "Famous Parisian Artists in Their Studios," published a few months after Edwin

Weeks' death in November 1903, included photographs of the studios of William Adolphe

Bouguereau, Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Louis-Ernest Barrias, Emmanuel Frémiet and

Jean-Leon Gérôme. This was heady company for Weeks, who had died not long before the

celebrated Gérôme, reported in several sources to have been an early teacher and consistent

influence on Weeks (a topic of Chapter Three). However, the Booklovers caption noted that

Weeks "pushed farther afield than Gérôme, adding the pagodas and bazaars of Benares to the

deserts of Morocco."45 Coupled with the text, Weeks' relaxed, self-assured pose communicates

to the reader that even compared with the undisputed master of the Orientalist genre Edwin Lord

Weeks could well hold his own in the studio and the field.

The Gilded Age artist's studio was the ultimate prop in the narrative construction of the

self. It declared individualism, professional status, superior taste, financial and material success,

urbanity and worldly sophistication.46 It was one of the most powerful tools available to artists

45. "Famous Parisian Artists in Their Studios," Booklovers Magazine 3, no. 4 (April 1904): 327–33.
46. Burns, 50.

43
as they strived to shape and manipulate their images in a world rife with the sometimes

colluding, sometimes competing points of view of critics, writers, dealers, patrons, the public,

the media and the artists themselves.47

For Edwin Lord Weeks and his contemporaries the studio was a tangible, complex

statement about the identity of the artist and, as Sarah Burns observed, about "what an artist was

to be in a changing and rapidly modernizing world, and what it meant to be modern and

American."48 Packaged for the press, Weeks in his studio was every inch the intrepid adventurer,

the sophisticate, the successful professional, the leading interpreter of Eastern culture, whose

transnational interests broadened Americans' and Europeans' views of the world.

After touring Weeks' Paris studio, no one summed up for the public the artist's multi-

faceted, romantic identity better than travel writer, lecturer, and early filmmaker Burton Holmes:

Suffice it now to take a hasty peep into the studio of an artist whose work appeals
to the traveler with peculiar force, for Edwin Lord Weeks is not only a painter, he
is a traveler, an explorer, and an enthusiastic Alpinist. He has revealed to us in all
the glory of its color and its sunshine the Indian and Persian East. Into Morocco
he has traveled, the deserts and the far-off islands of the world he has brought
near to us, the sublime terrors of the higher Alps he has expressed in quick,
vigorous strokes while finding a precarious foothold on icy pinnacles. He may
call one little room his studio, but his true studio is the wide world; its height is
marked by mountain-tops, its breadth by Orient and Occident.49

Weeks' artist-adventurer identity, a largely media-generated construction, was in the most direct

sense a sustained advertisement for his paintings and his career. It was also more than that. It

47. Burns, 2.
48. Burns, 2.
49. Holmes, 64–65.

44
broadened the definition of what an American artist could be and do. As the artist-adventurer

threw open the doors of his "true studio"—the wide world—he expanded what Americans could

imagine about themselves and their place in it.

45
 Chapter Two

Boston Beginnings

Because the personal correspondence relating to Edwin Lord Weeks is especially thin, any

biography of the artist must rely on miscellaneous newspaper articles, a few scattered letters and

various government records. Few primary or secondary sources convey much information about

his formative years or early career. Nonetheless, a full understanding of the artist’s deep roots in

the life and culture of New England is one of the armatures that supports multiple layers of

subsequent analysis.

A Yankee Through and Through

Edwin Lord Weeks was of rock-solid New England stock. On his father’s side, Weeks’

lineage reached all the way back to the colony at Jamestown, Virginia. His forbearer, Leonard

Weeks, landed with Captain John Smith in Jamestown then forged on to New Hampshire in

1639. Two centuries later, the rolling farmland of New Hampshire was still home to the Weeks

clan when Edwin’s father, Stephen Haines Pickering Weeks, was born there in 1816.1

1. Rossiter Johnson, ed., The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, vol. 10
(Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904). Ganley notes Weeks was descended from Leonard Weeks,
who emigrated from Somersetshire, England to settle in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1656; Ganley, 7
citing Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography 19 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1936), 601. This is confimed by a review of the Weeks geneology detailed by Jacob Chapman in Leonard
Weeks of Greenland, N.H. and Descendants, 1639–1888 (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s Sons, Publishers,
1889), 3–6, 11, 27–28. Chapman claims Stephen Weeks was born on January 22, 1816; the U.S. Census
for 1870 confirms that year but the U.S. Census for 1860 indicates his birth was in 1813. Previous
authors have suggested that Stephen Weeks' middle name was Holmes, and that he was a sea captain

46
 Not one to stray far from family, in September 1846 Stephen married Mary Lord in

Somersworth, New Hampshire, about twenty miles north of where Leonard Weeks first settled

two centuries earlier.2 Mary was a true Daughter of the American Revolution if ever there was

one. Her grandfather was Lieutenant Nathan Lord, a courageous officer of only seventeen in the

1775 siege of Boston. In the spring of 1775, fighting his way north, Nathan Lord was wounded

in the Battle of the Cedars a few weary miles west of Montreal, only to be “saved from a death

by torture at the hands of the Indians by an English officer, Edwin Parks Stanhope, for whom Lt.

Lord, at a later period, named his eldest son.” That son, Edwin Parkes Stanhope Lord, was

Mary's father and Edwin Lord Weeks’ grandfather.3

Early in their marriage Stephen and Mary Weeks ventured a few miles south to Boston,

where they resided at the time of the birth of first child, Edwin Lord Weeks.4 As a toddler,

turned merchant. I could find no evidence of either of these assertions, although it was a common enough
name for that time and geographic area that confusion is understandable.
2. Stephen Weeks married Mary Lord on 24 September 1846. New Hampshire Bureau of Vital Records
and Health Statistics, Concord, NH, “New Hampshire Statewide Marriage Records 1637–1947,” Stephen
Weeks, 24 September 1846.
3. William Hale provided the Lord family history in his application dated 14 April 1911 for membership
in the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. National Society of the Sons of the
American Revolution, Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889–1970, vol. 115
(Louisville, KY), SAR membership number 22894. Hale's mother was a sister of Edwin Lord Weeks'
mother; Hale's sister Frances married her cousin, Edwin Lord Weeks, in 1877.
4. Weeks declared he was born in Boston on his marriage certificate. Town and City Clerks of
Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Town Vital Collections, 1620–1988, Marriages Registed in the City of
Boston for the Year 1877, Record No. 1733, 12 September 1877. The 1850 U. S. Census places the
family near Boston Common. United States Census, 1850, Boston Ward 10, Suffolk, Massachusetts,
Roll M432_337, Record group 29, page 339A, Image 336, Dwelling 277, Family 493, Stephen Weeks/
Record Group 29. The 1860 U.S. Census lists residence in Quincy, although spelling and age
discrepancies indicate caution when considering this record. United States Federal Census, 1860, Quincy,
Norfolk, Massachusetts, Roll M653_514, page 21, Image 27, Dwelling 122, Family 149, Stephen Weeks.

47
Edwin lived very near Boston Common’s fifty acres of open park. His only sibling, Sarah

(“Minnie") was born on February 3, 1856.5 In 1860 the family resided in Quincy, Massachusetts

(now a southern suburb of Boston), though the city directory in the 1864 Boston Almanac

records them living once again near Boston Common.

Sometime after 1864 and before 1870, when Edwin Weeks was a teenager, the family

moved to Newtonville, one of several villages that made up the small town of Newton,

Massachusetts.6 Situated only a few miles west of Boston and served by a local express train

into the city, Newton was one of the nation’s first commuter suburbs.7 The Weeks family settled

into a large home on half an acre at the corner of Washington Place and Walnut Street, a main

artery very near the depot for the daily round-trip to Boston.8 With ten rooms, one bath, fruit

5. "Mrs. W.A.H. Goodwin Dead," Boston Daily Globe, 11 January 1916, 5.

6. The Weeks were residing in Newton by 1870. United States Census, 1870, Newton, Middlesex,
Massachusetts, Roll M593_630, page 157B, Image 321, Dwelling 1067, Family 1131, Stephen Weeks.
The population of Newton in 1850 was 5,258 according to the U.S. Census for that year.
7. Newton was an early suburb of Boston, defined during Weeks’ time as “all the surrounding cities and
towns within the territory whose limits are the terminal points for the local or suburban trains run by the
various steam railroads centering in the metropolis . . . The residents of this territory are closely connected
with the city by business and social interests, and may be termed, for the most part, day residents of
Boston." George Edward Ellis, ed., Bacon’s Dictionary of Boston (Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin
and Company, 1886), 389.
8. Earlier essays on Weeks have placed his home and his father's grocery in Newtonville. Weeks lived
in Newtonville as a teenager; his father's store was always in central Boston. A local Newton directory
for 1871 lists under "General Directory of Citizens" the following: "Weeks Stephen, grocer (Boston),
house Walnut, near Newtonville avenue." There is no listing for Weeks under the "Business Directory"
section for the Newton directory. Directory of the Town of Newton (Newton, MA: Samuel Chism, 1871),
192. An 1874 ward map for Newtonville clearly shows the name "S. Weeks" written on the lot located at
the corner of Walnut Street and Washington Place (Washington Place is now called Austin Street). "Part
of Newtonville," Atlas of Newton 1874 (New York: J.B. Beers and Company), 56–57. An 1873 Boston
directory commercial listing for Stephen Weeks' grocery notes the store at 236 Tremont and a "house at
Newtonville," The Boston Directory 69 (Boston: Sampson, Davenport and Company, 1873), 772. After
Stephen Weeks died in 1878, the family home was apparently sold to Dr. Mary Florence Taft and her

48
trees in the yard and a two-minute walk to the station, it was the ideal suburban location.9

Little is known of how Weeks may have spent his childhood years. He was probably

educated in the local public schools.10 That he developed early on a keen and imaginative

interest in drawing is evident from childhood sketches of horses and coats of arms preserved in

the files of the Archives of American Art; but how he fared in school, whether he was a serious

or an indifferent student, is not known. Weeks attended Union College in Schenectady, New

York, as a member of the class of 1870, but did not graduate.11 Apparently, the allure of plowing

through a pile of books was pretty thin, and certainly no match for the pull of an artist's career.

husband, a dentist. The Tafts had consulting rooms in their home. Massachussetts, Town Vital
Collections, 1620–1988, “Deaths Registered in the City of Newton for the Year Ending December 31,
1878,” 1, no. 20, Stephen Weeks.
9. Copy of an unidentified newspaper clipping (n.p., n.d.), The Art of Edwin Lord Weeks, File 1, Box 7,
Art Gallery Exhibition Files, 1941–2004, UA 9/3/1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University
of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH. Among other materials, the exhibition records contain copies
of 27 non-consecutive pages of a collection of newspaper clippings that appear to be a portion of the
missing "Weeks Family Scrapbook" (also cited as the "Weeks-Goodwin Scrapbook"). The scrapbook was
available to the 1976 exhibition organizers, and is mentioned by Oliver Pollack (who apparently had
access to it) in his 2004 article, but has since disappeared. My several attempts to locate the scrapbook
were not successful. In this dissertation, citations to the Weeks Family Scrapbook refer to the copied
pages in the files noted above.
10. “As a young boy Weeks was educated in the Boston and Newton public schools.” Ganley, 7, without
further reference.
11. This is based on a reference concerning the Theta Chapter of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity, Union
College, Schenectady, New York: "278. Edwin Lord Weeks. † At Union College, 1866–68. Studied and
practiced Art, since 1868. Artist: 128 Ave de Wagram, Paris, France." The Tenth General Catalog of the
Psi Upsilon Fraternity, ed. Henry Clark Johnson (Bethlehem, PA: Comenius Press, 1888), 52.
Confusingly, Weeks is also listed as a University of Michigan non-graduate in the Department of
Literature, Science and the Arts: "Edwin Lord Weeks, 66–67. Artist. Paris, France." University of
Michigan General Catalogue of Officers and Students, 1837–1890 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
1891), 371. These sources await reconciliation.

49
 Although E. L. Weeks was not of the most patrician class of Bostonians, clearly his family

enjoyed means substantial enough to enable the only son to go to college and later to sustain his

artistic career. His father, Stephen Weeks, was the proprietor of a prosperous specialty grocery.

Edwin Weeks’ charcoal portrait of his father (Figure 2-1), reminiscent of Thomas Eakins’ sombre

“head and shoulders” portraits, records the determined man of commerce in the resolute set of

the jaw, betrayed by a subtle softness in his eyes. In the mid-nineteenth century, in contrast to a

general store or a local market, a grocery handled imported dry goods or specialty items that

were not domestically manufactured or commonly available. The Weeks' family business,

Stephen Weeks & Co., was located only about a block from Boston Common. Its favorable

commercial address, 236 Tremont Street corner Eliot, is very much connected to the history of

Edwin Lord Weeks, the artist.12

Early Influences

After the Civil War, as Boston lost ground to New York as a driving force in national

commerce, the leading families of the city shifted some of their commercial energies to cultural

pursuits. Influenced by the writings of Carlyle, Coleridge and Ruskin, elite Bostonians

developed an ideology that placed business at the service of philanthropy and culture.13 These

tightly networked families belonged to the same clubs, were linked by socially strategic

12. Previous essays on Weeks have located Stephen Weeks’ store in Newtonville.
13. Mona Domosh, "Shaping the Commercial City: Retail Districts in Nineteenth-Century New York and
Boston," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no. 2 (Jun., 1990): 268–84, at 271.

50
marriages, and generally shared a common set of values, a solidarity that lent particular power to

their focus on cultural endeavors. Their attitudes permeated Boston society; their views

informed the social and economic aspirations of the middle class.

In post-war Boston, there was no greater marker of financial and social success than for a

tradesman to have the means to free his children from mundane business affairs. Regardless of

whether Stephen Weeks may have wished his son to take over the family business or pursue a

more conventional occupation, his attitudes were flexible enough and his pockets were deep

enough to support a fledging artist.14 Ironically, it was probably the grocery that not only helped

to launch Weeks' artistic career, but also facilitated his introduction to it. An imaginary stroll

from the doorstep of Stephen Weeks & Co., down nineteenth-century Tremont Street and along

the east side of Boston Common will suggest how this may have been the case.

The starting point is the grocery itself, Stephen Weeks & Co. (234–238 Tremont at the

corner of Eliot, now called Stuart Street). A photograph that dates to just after the end of the

Civil War clearly shows the storefront's bold signage “Stephen Weeks” and the tram line that ran

past the door (Figures 2-2, 2-24).15 The grocery was on the street level of Eliot Hall, a building

14. Ganley notes Weeks' determination to pursue an artistic career: “This decision disappointed his
father, but Stephan [sic] and Mary supported Edwin in his endeavors. His parents’ position and wealth
allowed Edwin to choose this career and maintain the lifestyle to which he was accustomed.” Ganley, 7. I
found no information indicating how Weeks' parents felt about his decision to become an artist.
15. Eliot Hall at 234–238 Tremont Street, ca. 1865, Item VW0001/- #001253, The Bostonian Society.
The Tremont Gymnasium sign is mounted just above the signage for Stephen Weeks & Co. Stephen
Weeks started in the grocery business on School Street, where he remained for some years. Next he
operated the firm as Smith & Weeks on Tremont Street near Eliot Street. It subsequently moved to the
corner of Tremont and Eliot opposite the location depicted in the photograph, then about 1860 moved to
the YMCA Building shown. The grocery still operated on this corner when Stephen Weeks died in 1878.
A one-paragraph history of the grocery was included in a brief obituary of Stephen Weeks. Weeks Family
Scrapbook, unidentified newspaper clipping [may be dated to 29 January, 1878]. A photograph of

51
whose architecture conveyed a good measure of unshakable sensibility if its address brushed

against a slightly bohemian quarter. Co-located with the grocery in the Eliot Building were the

Young Men's Christian Association and the Tremont Gymnasium.

It takes little imagination to feature a popular corner grocery as a hub of neighborhood

gossip. Located in the arts and theaters district, Weeks & Co. customers were well up on the

doings of Boston's most prominent composers, artists and musicians, as well as the latest

exhibitions and entertainments, from the Boston Theatre, "the leading Temple of Thespis in the

City of Notions, and one of the handsomest theatres in the world," to less reputable

amusements.16

One reliable source for provocative conversation was three or so blocks north, at 145

Tremont, facing Boston Common. From about 1864 to 1870 this address was home to the

exclusive gallery De Vries, Ibarra and Company (Figure 2-4). De Vries was adept at reeling in

prospective clients with sensational works such as Albert Bierstadt's Mt. Vesuvius in Eruption

(1868). Striking that irresistible combination of the horrifying and the religiously instructive, Mt.

Vesuvius was an undeniable crowd-pleaser. The Ladies' Repository called it "a magnificent

spectacle" of "Fire, smoke, molten lava, and the lurid, desolate waste below, all standing out

against a blue-black sky." The reviewer breathlessly continued: "The mighty spirit of the

volcano seems fiendish, and the pale, high moon a saint of heaven struggling vainly against the

Stephen Weeks' grocery in the Edwin Lord Weeks Papers at the Archives of American Art is likely a
record of an earlier location of the business.
16. The Stranger's New Guide through Boston and Vicinity (Boston: A. Williams and Co., 1869), 36.

52
powers of hell."17 Any nineteen-year-old rambling around the neighborhood of his father's store

surely would have been keen to behold the powers of hell.

Just a few steps farther down Tremont Street, at number 127, the gallery of Messrs. Child

& Jenks (Figure 2-4) offered more restrained fare. Confronted on one wall by Peter Rothermel's

(1817–95) Paul before Agrippa and on the other by Friedrich Biachoff's Golden Wedding, an

1864 reviewer for The Round Table described the former as "bad, decidedly, in its delineation"

with a "stuffy background" and "bilious flesh," but the latter as "the production of a great and

intellectual mind." Yet it was the gallery's unnamed work by Eastman Johnson, "A drowsy negro

woman, sitting by a half-open door, with a sleeping child upon her knee," that drew the unbridled

praise "No greater evidence of absolute genius can be found in the whole range of art than this

sleeping child."18

These galleries were located at the heart of fine arts production in Boston, in a

neighborhood that had been popular with artists at least since the 1850s.19 Doors away from

Child & Jenks, at 110 Tremont corner Bromfield, stood the imposing Studio Building (Figures

2-3, 2-4). This transplanted Second Empire stack of brick, four stories high, was the

headquarters for many of Boston's leading artists. The imposing French exterior elevated the

status of the domestic products sold in the ground-level shops—the Leavitt and Parker Sewing

17. "Literary and Artistic," Ladies' Repository 42, no. 1 (July 1869): 78.
18. "Boston Art Notes," Round Table, a weekly record of the notable, the useful and the tasteful 1, no. 25
(4 June 1864): 392–93. By 1871 this address would be occupied by Eliot, Blakeslee & Noyes,
representatives of Edwin Lord Weeks in Boston.
19. Neil Harris, The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years, 1790–1860 (New York: George
Braziller, 1966), 267.

53
Machine Company, the California Wine Agency, the Howard Clock Company.20 Above-stairs,

enveloping a "perfect hive of artists," a more stimulating atmosphere reigned.21

Sculptor and physician William Rimmer's (1816–79) anatomy lectures in Room 55 of the

Studio Building were popular with John LaFarge, Daniel Chester French and Frank Benson. As

steeped in the lessons of the dissecting rooms of Masssachusetts Medical College as in the early

modern anatomical plates of Albinus and Vesalius, Rimmer covered the blackboard with brawny

figures that sported wings, reclined against ornate urns and brandished daggers. In his spare

moments Rimmer frequented the private Tremont Gymnasium in search of models for his

astoundingly accurate figural representations. As mentioned, the gymnasium was in the same

building as Stephen Weeks' grocery (Figure 2-2).22

One of Rimmer's fellow tenants in the Studio Building was William Morris Hunt (1824–

79), in the 1860s and 1870s Boston's preeminent portrait and landscape painter. Prior to his

withdrawal from club activities in 1874 (the year Edwin Weeks began his formal training in

Paris), Hunt's studio and gallery "were the great attractions to visitors who came to the

'receptions' given by the artists in the building." Hunt's compatriots on the Boston art scene were

20. The Stranger's New Guide through Boston and Vicinity, 11.
21. “This structure is occupied on the streetfloor by six large stores, while above is a perfect hive of
artists. This building, indeed, is the head-quarters of the artists of Boston, though many of them are
located elsewhere. There are delightful artists’ receptions here, to which the general public is invited.
Besides the devotees of art, there are many private teachers of music and the languages in the Studio
Building, and not a few of the rooms are occupied as bachelors’ apartments.” Boston Illustrated (Boston:
James P. Osgood and Co., 1872), 72.
22. Lincoln Kirstein, "William Rimmer: His Life and Art," Massachusetts Review 2, no. 4 (1961): 685–
716, at 688–89.

54
also tenants of the Studio Building: Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), J. Foxcroft Cole (1837–92), and

Thomas Robinson (1835–88).23 In Living New England Artists Frank Torrey Robinson recalled

the Boston arts scene of the 1860s:

There is no doubt that [Frank Hill] Smith, [Albion Harris] Bicknell, [Thomas]
Robinson, [J. Foxcroft] Cole, [William Morris] Hunt, [Marcus] Waterman, and,
later on, [Frederic Porter] Vinton, and one or two others, had pretty much the
swing of art in Boston for several years, and it is well for the arts of to-day that
they did. They were constantly together, working like brothers in the cause, and
their interests seemed to be closely united.24

Edwin Weeks was a particular intimate of at least one member of this artistic coterie, J.

[Joseph] Foxcroft Cole (1837–92). In the summer of 1874 Weeks accompanied Cole and his

family to France to spend the summer sketching in Normandy. Cole was undoubtedly the surest

guide that Weeks had to the Parisian ateliers and the Salon system, for the older artist had

exhibited at the Salon in the later 1860s and early 1870s as well as at the Royal Academy and

various American exhibitions. Years before, Cole had apprenticed with Winslow Homer at J. G.

Bufford's lithography shop in Boston. In 1860 he traveled to France for three years of formal

instruction under Émile Lambinet, a practice that he continued in 1865 in the studio of Charles

Jacque, where he came to know the Barbizon painters Troyon, Corot, Daubigny and Diaz.25

Edwin Weeks was also acquainted with another tenant of the Studio Building, Edward

23. Frederic P. Vinton, "William Morris Hunt. I. Personal Reminiscences," American Art Review 1, no. 2
(December 1879): 49–54, at 51–52.
24. "J. Foxcroft Cole, S.A.A.," in Frank Torrey Robinson, Living New England Artists (Boston: Samuel
E. Cassino, 1888; reprinted New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1977), 45–51.
25. "Joseph Foxcroft Cole," Smithsonian American Art Museum, citing Peter Bermingham, American Art
in the Barbizon Mood (Washington, DC: National Collection of Fine Arts and Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1975), n.p..

55
Mitchell Bannister. Near J. Foxcroft Cole's Studio Building quarters (Room 51) were those of

Edward Mitchell Bannister (Room 85),26 a Canadian-American of African descent (1828–1901)

who had relocated to Boston in 1848. Boston had been a center of abolitionist activity from the

beginning of the nineteenth century, led by men and women like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maria

Child, Wendell Phillips, Stephen and Abby Foster, Maria Weston Chapman and William Lloyd

Garrison. Post-war, Boston had earned a reputation as one of the northeast's most hospitable

cities for African Americans, which is not to say that even in that city they were not the targets of

active and persistent discrimination. Finally gaining access to professional instruction in the

studio of William Rimmer, Bannister persevered for two decades to become one of the leading

artists of Boston, "a painter of genius."27 He was strongly influenced by William Morris Hunt, an

energetic promoter of the Barbizon School who revered Jean-François Millet. Many of

Bannister's works evoke the pastoral scenes and rustic motifs popularized by Millet, Jean-

Baptiste Corot (introduced to Boston by J. F. Cole), and Charles François Daubigny.28 In her

study of Henry Ossawa Tanner, art historian Marcia M. Mathews noted that Bannister shared a

studio with Edwin Lord Weeks.29 Weeks could not have been older than about twenty-one at that

26. The Boston Almanac for the year 1864, no. 29 (Boston: George Coolidge, n.d.), 154.
27. Moritz Carriére, Iconographic Encyclopedia of the Arts and Sciences, vol. 3 (Philadelphia:
Iconographic Publishing Co., 1887), 284.
28. Noted in an excerpt from the exhibition catalog, Free Within Ourselves: African American Artists in
the Collection of the National Museum of American Art, as quoted by Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island
College, "Edward Mitchell Bannister," http://www.ric.edu/bannister/about_emb.php, accessed 30 April
2012.
29. Bannister "had gone to Boston as a young man where, for a time, he shared a studio with the artist
Edwin Lord Weeks." Marcia M. Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1969), 18–19. Mathews corresponded extensively with members of the Tanner family

56
time, for Bannister moved to Providence, Rhode Island in 1870.

As a very young man, perhaps even as a teenager, Edwin Weeks the grocer's son was

clearly well-connected to the leading artists of Boston, from whom he undoubtedly sought advice

and professional guidance. Coupled with his considerable ambition, that was force enough to

launch his career.

Early Travels

Identifying mentors early on would have been a canny move for Weeks, for unlike the

myths that surround so many artists there is no indication of unusual promise emanating from the

watercolors that he produced as a teenager (Shoreline and Hanging Duck, both 1867). Though

these watercolors lack sophistication, they demonstrate Weeks’ lifelong interest in animal studies

and the mastery of realistic detail.30 Weeks’ fledgling talents were sufficiently admired by his

friend, fellow Newtonian C. J. (Charles Johnson) Maynard (1845–1929), to land him the

assignment of illustrator for Maynard’s The Naturalist’s Guide in Collecting and Preserving

Objects of Natural History, with a complete catalogue of the birds of Eastern Massachusetts

(Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870). This book is by no means lavishly illustrated, but its

one detailed rendering is quite creditable. Maynard was rather an “odd duck” himself, a loner

and self-taught naturalist, ornithologist, taxidermist and prolific author who became a recognized

and interviewed William Alden Brown, collector and pupil of Bannister, to develop her book. Tanner was
a welcome guest in Weeks' Paris home.
30. Ganley, 13.

57
expert on snails and the vocal organs of birds.

Weeks’ association with Maynard explains his first brush with the exotic, a trip to Florida

in 1869 “when he was scarcely twenty.” Our American Artists, penned by Weeks’ friend, fellow

artist and writer S.G.W. Benjamin, offers the only record of this excursion:

Cruising about the palm-tufted Keys in the small fleet schooners of the wreckers,
he found lots of fun and at the same time revelled in painting the yellow sands of
that semi-tropical peninsula lined with palms, and haunted by blue cranes and
pelicans.31

At the time there was intense interest in the Florida Everglades. The December 18, 1869 issue of

the popular Appleton's Journal published a full-page engraving of A Florida Scene to illustrate

an article on the Everglades. The Victorian imagination generated a truly mythic vision of an

overwhelmingly lush Florida, home to vines like "huge serpents" that seemed to "have sprung

with one leap fifty feet into the air;" to "the grandest live-oaks of the world . . . extending over a

surface of ground equal to the area of a 'city square;' " and to "a geniality of climate that can only

be understood by realization." The Appleton's article concluded with a challenge aimed squarely

at a young Yankee artist:

The frosts which make the Northern forests in the fall mottle with gay colors
never garnish these Southern landscapes; all is one intense but ever-varying green.
It is this feature which makes it quite impossible to reproduce these tropical
exhibitions on canvas, and renders all exaggerated displays of red, yellow, blue,
and scarlet, as peculiar to tropical regions, the falsest things of all the
demonstrations of meretricious art. 32

31. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 27.

32. "The Florida Everglades," Appleton's Journal: a magazine of general literature 2, no. 38 (Dec. 18,
1869): 556–58, at 558.

58
 Benjamin’s brief mention of the trip offers no insights into why Weeks went there, though

it is most plausible that he accompanied either C. F. Maynard and/or Boston artist George F.

Higgins. Higgins was yet another denizen of the Studio Building (Room 59), who painted a

number of South Florida scenes, including The Florida Keys (1870).33 Weeks' friend Maynard

spent three seasons stalking the flora and fauna of the Everglades. On an earlier 1867 trip, one of

Maynard’s comrades had a close call with a ten-foot crocodile, understandably snappish after

being shot through with a rifle. He did not mention Weeks as among the party on that occasion.34

However, the Boston artist Helen S. Farley made a trip with Maynard to Florida in 1870, the

same year that Weeks traveled there, according to S.G.W. Benjamin. Farley illustrated

Maynard’s two monographs, Catalogue of the Mammals of Florida, with notes on their habits,

distribution, etc. and The Birds of Florida (both 1872).35 It is unlikely that Farley traveled solely

in the company of Maynard; more probably there were others in the party, and one of the others

may have been Edwin Weeks.36 Among the paintings known from Weeks' Florida trip are:

33. Maybelle Mann, Art in Florida, 1564–1945 (Sarasota: Pineapple Press, 1999), 53–67.
34. Nathaniel Holmes Bishop, Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1879; reprinted Applewood Books Bedford, MA,
n.d.), 310.
35. "European and American Literary Intelligence," Trübner’s American and Oriental Literary Record 81
(29 June 1872): 183.
36. Helen Stevens (Greenwood) Farley (1849–1900) was first married to Henry Farley. When Henry
died, she married Henry R. Blaney, signing her later work Helen Farley Blaney. She maintained a studio
in Boston and was a manager of the Union Institute of Arts in Boston where her second husband was an
instructor in illustration. The above, and the 1870 date for travel to Florida in the company of Maynard,
were noted in “Death of Mr. Henry B. Blaney in Japan,” posted 21 December 2008 on the Blaney—
Family History & Geneology Message Board, Ancestry.com, boards.ancestry.com/
thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=258&p...blaney, accessed 17 April 2012. Gary R. Libby claims Weeks returned
to Florida in 1872, apparently based on his painting dated to that year; see Gary R. Libby, Reflections:

59
Florida Everglades with Great Blue Heron (signed and dated E. L. Weeks, 1871); Florida

Everglades, 1871 (dated "Dec. 26, 1871", Figure 2-5); Flowering Agave, Florida (dated and

inscribed "Jan. 20, '71, Miami"); and In the Everglades of Florida, 1872.37

According to S.G.W. Benjamin, the year after his trip to the Florida Keys Weeks sailed for

Surinam, that densely forested country situated on the northeast coast of South America, even

today remarkable for its biodiversity. Benjamin wrote that “among the somewhat unhealthy but

magnificent forests of South America" Weeks found "abundant material to whet his appetite for

brilliant effects.”38 There is no other record to verify this trip or indicate how or why Weeks

made it, although surely the adventure was reason enough. Undeterred by Surinam's nineteenth-

century reputation for exceptional unhealthiness, Weeks most plausibly journeyed there in the

company of a colleague of naturalist C. J. Maynard.

Upon his return to Boston, Weeks turned his attention to the woodland scenes and domestic

subjects found around his home in Newtonville and that of his grandparents in Rollinsford, New

Hampshire. From his "New England" period there are drawings and oil sketches of Wallis

Sands, Rye, New Hampshire; Appledore Island of the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire

coast; and Landscape with Blue Heron (1871). Also from 1871 is a small oil and a number of

sketches of sixteen-year-old Frances Rollins Hale, known all of her life as "Fannie," who was to

Paintings of Florida 1865-1965 (Daytona Beach, FL: Museum of Arts and Sciences, 2009), 42–43.
37. Barridoff Galleries, Fine Auction, American and European Art, Wednesday October 24, 2012 (South
Portland, ME: Barridoff Galleries, 2012), 20–22 and Libby, 42.
38. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 27.

60
marry Weeks six years later.39

Abroad in the 1870s

Owing to ambiguous, conflicting and missing data, the decade of the 1870s is a very

confusing one in the Weeks chronology. The principal source for these years has been the five-

page essay (with big pictures) on “Edwin Lord Weeks” in Our American Artists (1881), a book

for young people written by Weeks' close friend, S.G.W. Benjamin (1837–1914).40 In the few

modern accounts of Weeks' life, authors from the 1970s to the present have augmented

Benjamin’s brief essay with contemporaneous Boston newspaper articles and a few personal

letters, among them those found in the Alexander Stevenson Twombly papers at Yale University

and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. However, inconsistencies remain. The

following chronology draws on all of the relevant source materials, synthesizes and verifies the

research of previous Weeks scholars, in some cases confirming and in some altering their

chronologies.

A small, hasty pencil sketch of a snowy woodland scene dated "Feb 72" suggests that

Weeks spent that winter in Newtonville. Surely by this point Weeks was burning to break free of

New England and follow the paths laid before by J. Foxcroft Cole and the circle of William

Morris Hunt. Given his acquaintances and evident ambition, it would have been unthinkable for

39. Ganley, 14. Ganley dates the marriage to 1871, but it was actually in 1877.
40. As a young man Benjamin was also an aspiring Boston artist. He became better known for his art
criticism and later as the first United States Minister to Persia (1883–86). "S.G.W. Benjamin Dead," New
York Times, 20 July 1914, n.p.

61
Weeks not to be spurred towards training in the Parisian ateliers. After all, William Morris Hunt

had studied with history painter Thomas Couture in Paris until he came under the spell of the

radical Jean-François Millet, who converted Hunt into a Boston-based proselytizer for the

Barbizon school. Hunt's Boston compatriot, Elihu Vedder, was a student of the neoclassicist

François-Edouard Picot until his father cut young Vedder off, perhaps because of his deep

attachment to artist and Italian revolutionary Giovanni Costa. With Hunt's urging, from 1860

Weeks' close associate and mentor J. Foxcroft Cole studied off and on for years in France, in

winters at the École des Beaux-Arts, in summers with landscapist Émile-Charles Lambinet in

Normandy, and in 1865 with Charles Jacques in Paris. Obviously, if Weeks intended to join the

ranks of his Boston mentors, Parisian training was inescapable.

A season in Europe and a stint in the East is exactly what the ambitious twenty-two-year-

old Weeks lined up. In mid-April 1872 Weeks and two friends, the young illustrator A[delbert] P.

Close and Edgar A[llan] P[oe] Newcomb, sailed from New York for Liverpool aboard the

steamship Trinacria.41

Prior to their departure, Weeks and Close paid a visit to S.G.W. Benjamin's studio to try

convince him to join their Eastern “pilgrimage.” Writing some years later from a more mature

perspective, Benjamin still felt the tug of the spirited adventure that he missed. Bowing to the

41. On his April 8, 1872 passport application, for which Edgar A.P. Newcomb signed as witness, Weeks
is described in suitably Victorian terms as five-feet eight and one-half inches, with a low forehead, dark
brown eyes and hair, an oval face, aquiline nose and dark complexion. National Archives and Records
Administration, Washington, DC, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925, Collection Number: ARC
Identifier 566612 / MLR Number A1 508, NARA Series: M1372, Roll #: 180, Mar 1872–08 Apr 1872,
Image no. 1232. On April 14th Weeks, Newcomb and Close sailed for Liverpool on the steamship
Trinacria. “Passengers Sailed,” New York Times (1857–1922), 14 April 1872, 10.

62
pressure of unnamed "other plans," Benjamin lamented that "he was reluctantly obliged to go in

another direction.”42 It was a missed opportunity, but not a last chance. Artist, author and

(eventually) diplomat, Benjamin’s experience of the East lay in the future; in 1883 he was

appointed the first American Minister to Persia.

In his brief essay in Our American Artists, Benjamin recalled that on this initial trip to

Europe Weeks stopped in Paris "to gain some much needed instruction in his art" before

continuing on "for a long journey to the far East." 43 Aside from a very few dated sketches like

Loch Lomond (1872), not much is known of Weeks' travels, experiences and first impressions of

Europe. However, in 1872 he could have gained only the most cursory introduction to the

Parisian ateliers, for two months after they left New York Weeks and A. P. Close were already in

Beirut.

The first account of Edwin Weeks in the Levant is a somber one: on June 21st along with

members of the American Consulate the two young artists attended the Beirut funeral of a

leading Presbyterian missionary.44 Services for Mr. Galbraith, who had been felled by malaria

compounded by subsequent illnesses, were held at Beirut's Oriental Hotel. The funeral was to

42. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 28.

43. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 28.
44. “Syria Mission,” Reformed Presbyterian and Covenanter 10, no. 11 (November 1872): 340–41. The
article cites the account of the death and funeral of Galbraith, described in a July 31st letter from Dr.
James Martin, posted from Latakiyeh, as reported in the October issue of the Covenanter, Ireland. Martin
wrote: "Soon after four o’clock on Friday, a considerable number of persons, missionaries and others,
were assembled in the hotel. . . a cawass of the American Consulate advanced, and spread the American
flag upon the coffin. The following attended the funeral: . . . Mr. Close and his friend, artists from
Boston, travellers in Syria. . .”

63
portend an unforeseen end to the friends' companionable adventure.

In the Edwin Lord Weeks files at the Archives of American Art are a handful of typewritten

pages, presumably contemporaneous transcripts of Weeks' handwritten notes, that describe, in

run-on sentences and indifferent grammar, his 1872 experiences in Beirut and Cairo. He wrote

that he and Close enjoyed a hospitable welcome in Beirut. They dined with Dr. Daniel Bliss,

president of the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut), and his wife

in their home overlooking the Mediterranean. Weeks sarcastically called the marbled halls with

twenty-foot ceilings yet "another specimen of the houses in which missionaries learn to 'suffer

and be strong.' "45

Edwin Weeks was never content to confine himself to the genteel expatriate quarters

favored by so many other Western artists who traveled to the "East." Leaving reliable comforts

behind, he and Close trekked thirty or forty miles inland and north of Beirut to the cliffs of

Akorah (Akoura). Weeks vividly described sketching en plein air:

We left Akorah at seven. The usual crowd of beggars and loungers came around
the camp to see us off. One fellow with a withered hand settled himself on the
ground in front of me while sketching the village, and held out the maimed
member sturdily clamoring for buchshish meanwhile. When we left the camp
several children remained on the ground hunting for relics of the Howadju. After
climbing a high stony ridge from which we could see the Mediterranean beyond
Tripoli, we came suddenly on a little grassy hollow in which lay patches of green
turf and springs of water. Here were the black tents of some Bedaween
shepherds who were lying about on the grass with their flocks of goats and

45. Edwin Lord Weeks, "We have received hospitable welcome . . .," [Beirut and Akorah to Tripoli
account], Edwin Lord Weeks papers, [ca. 1885–1976], Box 1, Folder 1, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, (hereafter cited as Weeks, "Beirut Notes"). "Suffer and be strong" was a
reference to George William Curtis, Nile Notes of a "Howadji:" or, the American in Egypt (London:
Henry Vizetelly, 1855), 48; this book was probably among Weeks' reading materials for his trip.

64
 sheep. . . In the afternoon we came out upon the brink of the narrow and deep
valley . . . From this point we could not see the bottom, but over the outer and
between the vertical walls of rock now in the afternoon shadow, was a triangular
space of sea above the white speck which was Tripoli.46

The pair continued northward through mountainous terrain to Hasroun, where they camped

for three days. Weeks was getting his first taste of the challenges that enveloped the Western

artist traveling in the Eastern Mediterranean:

No sooner were the mules unloaded and Abdullah cooking utensils out than we
were surrounded by a curious throng of villagers who squatted about the tent and
during our stay at Hasroun, some three days, our camp was a resort for the boys of
the village who played leapfrog raising clouds of dust; but as soon as the
Howadjin commenced to sketch, write or do anything unusual the tent was
surrounded by a dense throng . . . The children as well as the grown people were
quite eager to be sketched, but then there was some difficulty in getting sketches
of the women. Those who had any pretensions to beauty became suddenly
bashful and hid their faces while the ugly ones were not at all backward in
displaying their charms. 47

The two artists toured with "the sheik of the village" and took coffee, sherbet and cigarettes at his

home. They struggled to overcome a language barrier only partly bridged by the helpful

Abdullah. Somehow through Abdullah they managed to get on well enough, regaling the sheik

with stories of North American and Seminole Indians—a topic prompted by their attempts to

place these extraordinary encounters in a familiar context.48 Each day they began anew, to

sketch, to write, to engage the villagers, to assess unfamiliar social settings and to apprehend

46. Weeks, "Beirut Notes," 1–2.

47. Weeks, "Beirut Notes," 2.
48. Close's illlustrations had recently been published for Helen C. Weeks' White and Red: A Narrative of
Life among the Northwest Indians (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869). It is uncertain whether Helen
Weeks was related to Edwin Lord Weeks.

65
their place in them. The people they met, sketched and tried to talk to were as curious about as

Weeks and Close as the two young artists were about them:

They were squatting round the fire the last thing at night and when the tent door
was opened at sunrise, there they were squatting in front waiting patiently to see
what the Howadjins were going to do next. 49

On one of their late-July excursions around Lebanon, shortly after their return to Beirut or

perhaps even on the way to Damascus, A. P. Close was overcome with fever. He lingered for

two months before dying in Beirut on September 16th, 1872. There is no known record of

Weeks' response to his friend's fatal illness, although a Boston newspaper reported that Close had

"the best medical advice and ministrations of careful and loving hands to the last."50 Writing four

years later, S.G.W. Benjamin echoed a common lament for the premature death of A. P. Close,

who "gave promise of standing among the foremost of American landscape painters . . .

Certainly no artist we have produced has evinced more abundant signs of genius at so early an

age." 51

Undaunted, the young Weeks journeyed on. The leaves of his notebook and a few dated

watercolors indicate that he sketched his way east to Damascus and south to the ancient city of

49. Weeks, "Beirut Notes," 3.

50. In a discussion of the genealogy of the Close family, a distant relative of A. P. Close quoted
extensively from unidentified Boston newspaper articles on the death of the artist in Beirut. Ronald E.
Close III, "Close Family History," 25 June 1996, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.genealogy/
browse_thread/thread/6f1f3647f9ab868b/313b990c55a0e0a7%3Flnk=st%26q=angus
%2Bcontractor%2Blandscape%26rnum=30%26hl=en, accessed 16 May 2012.
51. S.G.W. Benjamin, Art in America: a critical and historical sketch (New York: Harper and Bros.,
1880), 104–5.

66
Tyre, Lebanon. By October 8th he was in Jerusalem.52 A quickly executed watercolor from the

third week in October 1872 locates him in the port city of Jaffa (now Tel Aviv), captivated by the

desert dwellers and their broadly striped tents framed by rich foliage and swaying palms (Figure

2-6). In addition to providing insights into Weeks' earliest impressions of Greater Syria, these

sketchbooks reveal something of his technique of angular blocking, hatched shading, and

concentrated detail. His interest in precision (for example, the interlocking patterns of tile

colors) is already evident, as are his early struggles with the human form.53

By November, Weeks was steeped in the vigorous rounds of the Anglo-American tourist in

Cairo. Journaling as if he could not pen the impressions quickly enough, his stream of staccato

prose notes the colors and detail that punctuated the sweeping views from the Citadel:

Elnohattam, the mountain rising behind it like Arthur's seat at Edinborough [sic];
situated parallel of rock; cadmium yellow color. Vast volume of current of the
yellow Nile resembling to the [blank] and other tropical rivers; distant hazy shores
fringed with palm groves, crowds of lateen sails. Avenues of massive foliage at
Boulah and Old Cairo. Rich and quaint forms of the minarets and other
architecture, bizarre outline and colors; embroided [sic] domes, Animated bazaar
seen through Babel Nasn. Smooth roads, not paved with uncomfortable stones as
in Damascus Rome or Jerusalem . . . People sleeping along side the streets on
benches. 54

52. The following works offer evidence of Weeks' itinerary for this trip: Cedars of Lebanon, dated 1872;
Jerusalem, watercolor, dated October, 1872; Jerusalem Trees, pencil on paper, dated October 8th; Inynena
Mosque, Damascus, watercolor, dated 1872; St. Thomas Gate, Damascus, watercolor, n.d.; Tyre,
watercolor, n.d. Ganley, 21.
53. A set of six of Weeks' early sketchbooks containing 20–45 pages each was sold at auction by
Bonham's, 13 May 2010, Orientalist Pictures and Works of Art, Auction 18180, Lot 63. Several of the
images are posted online.
54. Edwin Lord Weeks, "Cairo Notes," Edwin Lord Weeks papers, [ca. 1885–1976], Box 1, Folder 1,
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

67
 His impressions of Cairo are jumbled, kaleidoscopic. Shaved donkeys, purple minarets,

crimson turbans, the endless cries for "buckshish" jostle his senses and occasionally strain

Weeks' patience. Alternately fascinated and overwhelmed, his comments on the "pyramid

business" reveal his mounting frustration with the Cairo tourist routine:

Arabs seize us and we are hustled up. Talk about buckshish all the way up.
Brazillian gentleman (fat one) quite used up. Top of pyramid covered with names.
They take us up over the biggest steps; see that it is quite possible to go up an
easier way. humbug. Come down again. Buckshish. My deaf friend puts his hand
in his pocket from time to time draws forth buckshish. Arabs want more. Bores at
bottom want us to buy coins, images, trinkets. Go inside. Slide through inclined
passage dust clothing. Arabs drag us part way. Chant all the way: about buckshish.
Flourish torches; look wild. Don't experience any emotion. Get into the chamber
horrible echoes. More names . . . Sit down on a stone; draw breath and
contemplate sphinx. Small boy with jar of water squats on one side begs
piteously for buchshish, carried the water up to the top and down inside for me to
drink didn't drink any. Won't pay him. Idiotic old grizzly old beggar on the side,
buckshish. Gets between me and sphinx, poke him out of the way with a stick.
Brazillian come to contemplate sphinx. Completely blown, is borne aloft on the
shoulders of a dozen Arabs, all clamor for buchshish, ridiculous sight. Arabs
produce more coins. Having contemplated sphinx retire, bodyguard twenty Arabs.
. . . Get into carriages. Sheik alonside want more buchshish but at him with whip.
Small boy runs along other side with jar of water, no buchshish. Goodbye, give
him cut with the whip.55

The haughty nature of this lengthy quotation does not flatter Weeks. Not even his sojourn

in Morocco during the height of the 1878 famine—the subject of a later chapter—prompted this

kind of response. Instead of the inquisitive young man who, a couple of months earlier, chatted

amiably with the villagers in the mountainous region north of Beirut, who took sherbet and

cigarettes with the sheik, Weeks' quickly jotted "Cairo notes" reveal an exasperated and arrogant

character not reflected elsewhere in his writing. Of course, in 1872 the full pyramids tour

55. Weeks, "Cairo Notes."

68
required eleven miles of donkey riding in the full desert sun, which would erode anyone's

patience. Nonetheless, tourists were routinely warned to expect the pressing throngs and

constant begging. Advising practical and armchair travelers on scaling the pyramids, Harper's

American Traveller's Guide shrugged off the incessant demands for backsheesh with a light tone:

You having to pay the sheik one dollar for their services, will you refuse as
directed? No! nine chances out of ten, you give them something, as you know
a little slip, and where would you be?56

The two-and-one-half pages of Weeks' "Cairo Notes" supplies ample evidence of the

condescending attitude that was all too prevalent among Victorian tourists traveling in the

Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. However, to extrapolate from this brief aide-mémoire

to Weeks' mature attitudes and intentions regarding the Islamic world is an unsteady proposition.

The essay's broken sentences differ markedly from the more coherent and relaxed "Beirut

Notes." The draft differs in style and tone from all of his subsequent published writings. His

stunted note, "Don't experience any emotion," hints at the cumulative stress of months of travel,

the newcomer to an alien culture, and the death of his companion A. P. Close, buried only weeks

before in Beirut.

Weeks remained in North Africa through December. His painting of 1872 entitled Tangier,

Morocco suggests that he visited that city after he departed Cairo, though at present this initial

visit cannot be corroborated by textual evidence.57 If he indeed traveled to Morocco in 1872, it

56. William Pembroke Fetridge, The American Traveller's Guide: Harper's Hand-book for Travellers in
Europe and the East (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873), 498.
57. Tangier, Morocco, dated to 1872, appears in William H. Gerdts, "Americans in Faraway Places, in the
Roderic H. D. Henderson collection," Magazine Antiques 91, no. 5 (May 1967): 647–49 at 647; it is also
cited by Thompson, 248. The sketchbook(s) of 1872 might verify an 1872 trip to Tangier, although this

69
was for only a few weeks at most, for just after the New Year 1873 he disembarked in New York

from the steamship Parthia, arriving from Liverpool.58

Back in Boston

That winter, while most Bostonians were preoccupied with rebuilding after the great fire of

November 9, 1872 that leveled sixty-five acres of downtown Boston, Weeks diligently prepared

for the March opening exhibition of the Boston Art Club, where he kept a studio.

The recently revived Art Club was a sophisticated enclave for upper-class gentlemen artists and

fine arts enthusiasts (male, of course). The club leased a bow-front brick townhouse at 64

Boylston, formerly a private residence (about a block from Stephen Weeks' grocery; see map,

Figure 2-4). This urbane gentlemen's retreat boasted a spacious sky-lighted exhibition gallery,

dining and reading rooms, a handsome library, and its own paintings collection. For its two

annual juried exhibitions, monthly social gatherings and occasional concerts women were

welcomed as guests, but not as members.

The Art Club, "among the most interesting resorts in Boston," was the venue for visual arts

professionals and patrons, as touted in the Art Journal:

Here, three or four times a year, exhibitions of artistic products take place,
including the works of both native and foreign artists, which are attended with
much interest by the élite of the city. The Art-Club has really done a great deal to
promote and refine the aesthetic tastes of Bostonians. It has provided an

author has reviewed neither the painting nor all of the sketchbook images.
58. Weeks arrived back in New York on January 4th. “Passengers Arrived,” New York Times, 5 January
1873, 8.

70
 opportunity not only to observe and compare the results of the work produced in
Boston studios from year to year, but to see the finer specimens of foreign art
acquired from time to time by private collections. It is the only place where the
art-purchases of wealthy Bostonians abroad may be seen by the general public;
and where it is possible to make wide selections from the productions of native
artists. 59

In addition to a comfortable studio with enviable amenities, the Art Club and its membership

(five to six hundred in 1875) provided Weeks with a prestigious professional address, a venue to

show his works regularly, and a ready network of the most successful Boston artists and the most

prominent local collectors of European and American works. The club's mid-March exhibition

consisted primarily of paintings by foreign artists, although several Bostonians participated. One

reviewer found Weeks' Egyptian watercolors "quiet and subdued and naturally effective," but

they failed to garner the praise accorded Frank Hill Smith's Venetian scenes or the piscatorial art

of W. M. Brackett.60 If anything, this tepid response steeled Weeks' determination to succeed.

The following month he consigned a number of paintings to Leonard & Co. to be auctioned on

April 25th, along with those of more established Boston artists.61 Throughout the summer and

59. "The Boston Art Club," Art Journal, n.s. 1 (1875): 95.
60. Under the heading of watercolors, "E. L. Weeks' Egyptian sketches are quiet and subdued and
naturally effective." “Art and Artists. The Boston Art Club Exhibition," Boston Evening Transcript, 25
March 1873: 2. The thorough Atlantic Monthly notice of the exhibition did not mention Weeks. "Art,"
Atlantic Monthly 3, no. 185 (March 1873): 371–72.
61. The advertisement reads: “By Leonard & Co., Auctioneers and Appraisers, [48 and 50 Bromfield
street.], Boston Artists’ Sale. Oil Paintings. On Friday, April 25, at 2 o’clock P.M., In the Library
Salesroom, No. 50 Bromfield street, a collection of about One Hundred Paintings, from the studios of the
following Boston artists: J. Foxcroft Cole, F. H. Shapleigh, Frank Howland, B. Champney, S. P.
Hodgdon, G. W. Seavey, J.E.C. Petersen, D. A. Clough, Miss Stetson, Frank H. Smith, J. R. Key, Henry
Bacon, G. N. Cass, George Niles, W. Webber, E. L. Weeks, J. E. Miles, Miss Horton, Thos. Robinson, W.
A. Gay, Thomas Hill, S. W. Griggs, J. J. Enneking, Champ, F. Snow, Miss E. Champney, and others. The
pictures will be on exhibition four days previous.” Boston Daily Globe, 19 April 1973, 3.

71
fall he continued to market through Elliot, Blakeslee and Noyes, who energetically promoted his

work. With a reputable gallery solidly behind him and a relentless focus on improving his skills,

Weeks' notices steadily improved.

In concert with his emerging public profile, Weeks began to weave the Orient into his

artistic reputation. S.G.W. Benjamin pegged the "turning point" to Weeks' first exposure to the

East, "for it discovered to him the field in which his genius could find its most natural

expression." Although only in his early twenties, Weeks had recognized that, for him, the East

was indeed a career.62

The young artist decked his Boston Art Club studio with the souvenirs of his travels to

evoke a fitting atmosphere for his paintings of Cairo, Lebanon, Tangiers and Damascus, a

panorama of the Southern Mediterranean. His small oil-on-board sketch, Moroccan Market

Scene (1873, Figure 2-7), typifies this early work and the Orientalist genre paintings then

popular.63 Looking past the weak draftsmanship, the themes that were to engage the artist for his

entire career were already present: interest in the prosaic life of the East, compositions with

multiple figures and animals dominated by architecture, the dramatic effects of sunlight,

authenticating detail, rich color.

Also from 1873 is the much livelier finished watercolor, The Moorish Bazaar (Figure 2-8).

62. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 28. "The East is a career," Benjamin Disraeli in Tancred (1847),
quoted by Edward Said as an epigraph to his seminal work, Orientalism (1978).
63. Signed by E. L. Weeks and dated 1873, as listed by the online auction database Artfact. "Lot 53:
Edwin Lord Weeks (1849-1903)," Sotheby's, American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, Sale 7273,
March 11, 1999 (New York: Sotheby's, 1999).

72
This image, contrasting the weather worn masonry with the bright sunlight and busy market, is

of the Bab Zuwiela (Zuwayla), the last remaining southern gate of the medieval fortress walls of

Fatimed Cairo.64 With its history of decapitations, hangings and healing powers (one had only to

drive a nail in one of the huge doors to alleviate a toothache), the massive gate had been a tourist

attraction long before it was commemorated in David Roberts' Egypt and Nubia (London 1846–

49). In Weeks' version, the figures may be rather stiff, but the morning sun's glare fills the scene,

the deft composition easily manages competing lines and geometric shapes, and the use of

intense red is well-controlled. Importantly, this early work clearly demonstrates Weeks'

dedication to representational accuracy. A recent photograph of the gate verifies how carefully

Weeks recorded exactly what he observed (Figure 2-9). Comparing the photograph and the

watercolor reveals that the proportions are precise, the numbers of the bricks are closely

calculated, the alternating banding corresponds neatly. Even the view through the gateway to the

crooked streets of Old Cairo includes, unmistakably, the elegantly arched fenestration of the

building to the right.65

A review of Weeks' painting of a Damascus sunset from the Boston Daily Globe of June

17, 1873 suggests how quickly the twenty-three year old artist acquired an audience for his

interpretations of the East. In typical Victorian fashion the author conjures an image of the

64. This new identification confirms Dr. Ellen Morris' suggestion that the scene "is possibly a view in
Cairo." Ellen Morris, "Lot 85 Notes, The Moorish Bazaar, Edwin Lord Weeks," in Sotheby's, American
Paintings, Drawing and Sculpture, March 14, 2001, Sale 7615 (New York: Sotheby's, 2001).
65. Weeks' painting of this subject is remarkably close to one by English artist William Logsdail, The
Gate of the Khalif (1887), reproduced in Kristian Davies, The Orientalists: Western Artists in Arabia, the
Sahara, Persia and India (New York: Laynfaroh, 2005), 182–83.

73
painting with a detailed description of the Eastern scene, a tiresome slog for the modern reader.

But it also communicates the subject's worthiness, relevance, emotional and aesthetic appeal, and

the artist's devotion to authenticity. These criteria, lumped under the umbrella of "genuine and

unpretending," were the measures of Weeks' early works:

This picture is full of the sentiment and poetry of early evening in the Orient. A
warm and golden atmosphere, suffused with tints of pale crimson, surrounds the
landscape and reveals the outlines of every object within its limits. The camels
composing the caravan are minutely drawn, as are also the figures of the Syrian
drivers, whose picturesque costumes add much to the life and beauty of the scene.
Taken in detail or as a whole, this is a picture of rare interest and beauty, and so
unlike anything lately seen in this city that to its other attractions is superadded
the charm of novelty. There are also several other pictures in the studio of Mr.
Weeks, illustrating the life and scenery of the Eastern world, which cannot fail to
inspire more than an ordinary degree of interest in the minds of every student of
sacred history and every lover of genuine and unpretending art.66

The arts reviewer for the Boston Evening Transcript was likewise taken with the authenticity of

Weeks' images. The excerpt below, from an article of September 1873, bears not a hint of the

modern skepticism that accompanies the production of images. Weeks' travels to the "East", his

participation in that culture, were the guarantors of his vision. It did not hurt that he apparently

could tell a good story:

66. The review begins: "E. L. Weeks, whose studio in the building of the Art Club, with its views in
Egypt, Syria and Palestine, and the picturesque national costume which hang upon its walls, remind the
visitor of an apartment in the Orient, has nearly finished a large and elaborate picture of a sunset as seen
from the city of Damascus. Among the prominent objects in the picture is the Convent of the Dervishes,
with its lofty minarets, and a caravan returning from Beyrout with heavily laden camels, while under the
shade of a small grove on the right of the picture is a café, at which a group of travellers have halted for
rest and refreshment. Through the foreground flows a stream formed by the union of the sacred rivers of
Abana and Pharpar, which were thought by the captain of the King of Syria to be more efficacious in the
way of healing than all the waters of Israel." "The Fine Arts. Sunset at Damascus," Boston Daily Globe,
17 June 1873, 1.

74
 E. L. Weeks is at work on a Mohammedan dervish at prayer, which is one of his
best studies of Eastern character. The artist met the subject at a bazaar, and
succeeded, after much persuasion, in inducing him to visit his room, where he
spent the afternoon busily sketching him. Towards night the dervish began to
grow impatient, and as the sun approached the horizon he suddenly kicked his
shoes off, and, raising hands aloft, went through his devotions, giving Mr. Weeks
an opportunity not often vouchsafed to an artist, which he was not slow to avail
himself of. 67

Weeks maintained a rigorous exhibition schedule through the summer of 1874, when he

planned to venture abroad again for a holiday in Normandy and formal study in Paris. Prior to his

departure, the young artist had labored for months to supply Blakeslee and Noyes with a

generous inventory of Orientalist scenes that they marketed assiduously throughout the summer

and autumn.68 The gallery's steady advertising in The Boston Globe and The Boston Evening

Transcript, along with favorable newspaper reviews, were definitely spurring sales:

The second exhibition of the Art Club, for the present year, opened on Wednesday
evening. The collection comprises a large number of good pictures by American
and foreign artists. Among the former . . . A 'View on the Nile, near Cairo,' by
E. L. Weeks, is a fine specimen of his feeling for glowing color and atmospheric
effects. 'A Pilgrim Caravan' just leaving Damascus afford him an opportunity for

67. The review concludes: "Among Mr. Weeks’s works of the summer are an East Indian watercarrier,
and a couple of desert scenes, all strong in color. They will be among the works of art at the fall opening
of Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes.” "Art Items," Boston Evening Transcript, 23 September 1873, 8, col. 1.
68. "Special Artists' Sale. / Now on exhibition of the Gallery of Elliott, Blakeslee & Noyes, 127 Tremont
Street, and to be sold by auction on Friday, May 15, at 2 P. M., / A very attractive collection of paintings,
mostly by the following well-known Boston artists: Francis Snowe, Wesley Webber, W. F. Lansil, J. J.
Enneking and E. L. Weeks. Also a few pictures by T. Hill, Virgil Williams, Ed. Hill, Miss A. C. Newell,
F. D. Williams, T. Robinson, Moses Wight and others." "Special Artists' Sale," Boston Daily Globe, 13
May 1874, 5, Boston Daily Globe (1872–1922), ProQuest Historical Newspapers, <http:/
/www.proquest.com>, accessed 5 April 2012; "A collection of Paintings by E. L. Weeks and S.G.W.
Benjamin, Comprising a great variety of subjects and including some of the best productions of these
well-known artists. Now on exhibition at the Gallery of Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes, 127 Tremont street.
To be sold by AUCTION on THURSDAY, November 19 . . ." "Artists Sale," Boston Evening
Transcript, 16 November 1874, 7.

75
 the exhibition of his skill in the drawing of figures of men and animals. This
picture is a beautiful and graphic illustration of life in the Orient. 69

Weeks' subjects, "novel and treated in a masterly manner," were drawing crowds of admirers at

Blakeslee and Noyes and at the Boston Art Club.70 Two days later, on May 7, 1874 the Evening

Transcript carried an even more effusive review of the Art Club's exhibition:

E. L. Weeks has never done better work than in the two Eastern landscapes he has
here. The one of 'A Pilgrim Caravan' is good in the drawing of the figures, and
the composition introduces in fine effect a Nubian, nearly nude, as a central
figure, that is decidedly striking. By some unaccountable taste (or lack of it) in
hanging, the subject is hung beside a Ziem that is too hot and theatrical for the
most refined taste, and that robs it of much that is really meritorious. On the other
side of the room away from this intense blaze, it would do him much more credit.
The other canvas by this artist is a view of the river Nile, near Cairo, and its
breadth of treatment and luminous color are exceedingly marked, while its
qualities of atmosphere are decidedly the best he has ever given us.71

The unqualified praise for View on the Nile near Cairo (Figure 2-10) was not tossed off in every

artist's direction; not even the esteemed William Morris Hunt was spared the occasional critical

lance. In the same review, for example, the Evening Transcript had dismal words for French

painter Hugues Merle's Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt: "It is not only

69. "Art Items. Boston Art Club," Boston Evening Transcript, 4 May 1874, 1, col. 5. In the same review,
the critic was not so complimentary to the eminent William Morris Hunt: " 'A Scene in Florida,' by Hunt,
occupies a conspicuous position. It is bad in color, and evidently a hasty sketch, which would attract but
little attention but for the prestige of the painter's name."
70. Supplementary forces were operating in Weeks' favor; there were sound economic reasons to laud the
exhibitions of such a reliable advertiser. "The pictures now on exhibition and to be sold by auction at the
gallery of Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes, are attracting a crowd of admirers . . . Mr. Weeks's subjects are
novel and treated in a masterly manner." "Art Items," Boston Evening Transcript, 13 May 1874, 1, col. 5.
More on the Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes exhibition appeared the next day: "E. L. Weeks has several
excellent Eastern subjects, and a view in Florida, all of which are good, and his Florida sketch is full of
pleasing color and conscientious work." "The Fine Arts," Boston Evening Transcript, 14 may 1874, 4,
col. 5.
71. "The Art Club Exhibition," Boston Evening Transcript, 7 May 1874, 6, col. 2.

76
unconventional, but characterless to the verge of imbecility. The other subject, by this artist,

hanging opposite, is as faulty as this is weak."

Merle's evident shortcomings were not called out just because he was French, for fellow

countryman Léon Bonnat's Figures, "an Italian girl holding a bouncing babe in her arms,

evidently just from the bath," stole the show:

The gem of the collection, and probably the finest of its class ever brought to this
country—we have certainly never seen its equal is the one catalogued simply
'Figures,' and numbered 62, from the easel of Leon Bonnat. It represents a little
girl standing and holding in her arms a nude babe. The modeling of the figures is
good, their pose artistic, the flesh color perfect, the lights and shades managed all
with facility and knowledge, and above all, the human feeling and strong
sympathy of the artist with his subject, are manifest in a striking manner. Whether
the picture is studied as a work of art, or as a subject around which the heart's
sympathies may play, it is perfect.72

Bonnat's Figures must have mightily impressed Weeks. Only a few months after the exhibition

the June 1, 1874 edition of the Boston Evening Transcript announced Weeks' imminent departure

for France. He was to enroll in the Paris studio of Léon Bonnat, who would claim the young

artist's allegiance for the balance of his career.73

72. "The Art Club Exhibition," Boston Evening Transcript, 7 May 1874. Bonnat's painting is likely the
same that was exhibited in Boston that autumn, described in "The Fine Arts Exhibition at the Mechanic
Fair," Boston Evening Transcript, 21 Sept. 1874, 6 col. 4.
73. "Several of our resident artists will spend the summer across the water, among them Rouse and
Weeks, J. Appleton and others," "Art Items," Boston Evening Transcript, 1 June 1874, 1 col. 2. Weeks
exhibited actively throughout 1873. "E. L. Weeks also has here a number of his Oriental studies in color,
his dervish and water-carrier, and two desert scenes in especial being of marked merit," "Art Matters,"
Boston Evening Transcript, 30 October 1873, 1 col. 2. Blakeslee and Noyes Gallery sent three of Weeks'
paintings to the Exposition at Cincinnati. “Literary and Artistic,” Ladies’ Repository: Religious and
Literary Magazine for the Home Circle 50, no. 4 (Oct. 1873): 317.

77
 Chapter Three

Professional Training in Paris

For Edwin Lord Weeks, the years between 1872 and 1882 were characterized by steady

improvement of skills, an advancing reputation as an intrepid traveler and painter of North Africa

and a single-minded ambition to rival the leading French Orientalist artists. During the 1870s, as

Weeks looked to European models to advance his training and professional reputation, he was in

step with innumerable post-Civil War American artists. Only sixteen at the close of the Civil

War, Weeks mulled over the pursuit of an artist's career as the nation treaded onward in a tumult

of emotional anxiety and stricken confidence. His decision to pursue professional training in

Paris in the mid-1870s in the ateliers of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Léon Bonnat coincided with

America's dramatic, post-Civil War turning towards continental Europe in search of a new

intellectual, philosophical and social identity. Apparently Weeks was a quick study. When

railroad magnate John Taylor Johnston called on Bonnat to name the most promising young

American painter in Paris, Bonnat reportedly answered without hesitation "Weeks." 1

Destination Paris

For hundreds of post-Civil War American artists, only in Paris was the training

sufficiently rigorous, the competition sufficiently worthy, and the awards sufficiently glorious.2

1. It was an endorsement Johnston apparently took to heart: "Since then, Mr. Johnston has purchased
several of Weeks's best pieces, and set the example for the New York world of picture-buyers of 'going
long on' Weeks." Greta, "Boston Correspondence," Art Amateur 3, no. 5 (Oct. 1880): 94.
2. H. Barbara Weinberg, The American Pupils of Jean-Léon Gérôme (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum

78
The École des Beaux-Arts offered an intense, demanding professional curriculum. The annual

Paris Salons launched careers, honed international reputations and stoked a substantial arts press

on both sides of the Atlantic. Every major metropolitan newspaper in the U.S. dissected the

slights and echoed the triumphs of American artists at the Salons. As art historian Michael Quick

observed: "Jean François Millet and Mariano Fortuny were names known and discussed in

Midwestern towns, where it was possible to follow the main successes of the Paris Salon (and

the fortunes of Americans exhibiting in it)."3

In Europe and America, no painter's reputation flourished more than that of Jean-Léon

Gérôme, the widely acknowledged master of the French Orientalists. In the early 1870s Gérôme

was known for an astonishing range of visual exotica, all realized in precise, minute detail,

achieved with thin layers of paint that revealed nary a brushstroke. Gérôme smoothed away the

reality of the canvas so that viewers could seamlessly immerse themselves in proto-cinematic

scenes of ancient Rome (Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant, 1859; Pollice Verso, 1872); highly

detailed, often sexualized and denigrating imaginings of the East (Dance of the Almeh, 1863,

Figure 3-1; The Slave Market, 1866; Pelt Merchant of Cairo, 1869; Moorish Bath, 1870);

encounters between East and West (The Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors at Fontainbleau,

1864; Oedipus, 1867–8); Orientalist genre (Bashi-Bazouk Singing, 1868; Cairene Armorer,

1869); figural and pseudo-ethnographic studies (Black Bashi-Bazouk, 1869; Arnaut of Syria,

of Western Art, 1984), 1.

3. Kathleen Adler, Erica E. Hirshler, H. Barbara Weinberg, Americans in Paris 1860–1900 (London:
National Gallery Company Ltd., 2006), 27, quoting the exhibition catalog by Michael Quick, American
Expatriate Painters of the Late Nineteenth Century (Ohio: Dayton Art Institute, 1976), 16.

79
1870–71); or scenes of religious piety (Prayer on the Housetops (Cairo), 1865).

American galleries clamored for Gérôme's canvases; he was positioned at the foreground

of the leading centenary exhibitions in New York. His works were particularly sought after by

wealthy Americans. A year before Weeks left for Paris in 1874, New York dry goods merchant

Alexander Turney Stewart added Gérôme's Pollice Verso (Figure 3-2) to his collection, at a price

of 80,000 francs, setting a new record for the artist.4 Over the course of his career, Gérôme sold

to American patrons 144 paintings, nearly a quarter of his production.5

Despite his prodigious output and enormous transatlantic success, most scholarly articles

of recent decades cite Gérôme's work as a noxious blend of the trite, the exploitative and the

stultifying academic. However, the latest scholarship is re-evaluating Gérôme and his

importance in the nineteenth century. A 2010 essay by art historian Mary G. Morton locates

Gérôme at the very center of the post-war shift in American tastes in favor of contemporary

French painting. Morton points out that, contrary to most twenty- and twenty-first century

perspectives, in Weeks' time Americans found Gérôme's paintings complex, edifying and

completely modern:

From the late 1850s to the end of the century, Gérôme represented high art in
America, and through his paintings and public persona, he served as both a
positive and a negative model for Americans seeking to define a new culture. He
was idealized for his professionalism, his cosmopolitan Frenchness, his
intellectualism, erudition, and refined technical training. But he was also

4. DeCourcy E. McIntosh, "Goupil and the American Triumph of Jean-Léon Gérôme," in Musée Goupil,
Gérôme and Goupil: Art and Enterprise, trans. Isabel Ollivier (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux,
2000), 38. Goupil sold the painting to Stewart's English associate George Fox, likely an agent for
Stewart.
5. McIntosh, 34, 38.

80
 disdained as overly commercial, and suspected of a characteristically French
moral degeneracy that some Americans sought to escape in the reconstruction of
their national identity.6

Apparently Gérôme's extensive Orientalist repertoire and extraordinary reputation

impressed Edwin Weeks more than concerns about his questionable commercial motives or the

moral pitfalls that might confront his followers or a young art student in Paris. As an enthusiast

of exotic travel eager to embark on the most obvious path to artistic success, in the fall of 1874

Weeks applied for admittance to the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, who headed one of the three

painting studios of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

This was an astute social and professional step for any ambitious American artist, but

particularly for one fast gaining ground as a painter of the East. The masters of the French

ateliers often served as mentors to promising students, promoting their works and facilitating

introductions. Few artists could match Gérôme's extensive travel experiences in the Islamic

world and fewer still could boast of such an extensive professional network or commercial

success.

In 1863 Gérôme married Marie, daughter of Adophe Goupil, the founder of the dynasty

of Parisian art dealers and publishers Goupil & Cie. The alliance proved lucrative. By 1867 the

market for Gérôme's paintings had skyrocketed, facilitated by Goupil's canny marketing of

inexpensive but highly profitable reproductions.7 Because Goupil had founded a New York

6. Mary G. Morton, "Gérôme in the Gilded Age," in Laurence des Cars, Dominique de Font-Réaulx,
Édouard Papet, ed., The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) (Milan: Skira Editore; Los
Angeles: Getty Museum; Paris: Musée d'Orsay, 2010), 183–210, 183.
7. See chart entitled Purchases and sales of Gérôme's paintings by Goupil Gallery, Hélène Lafont-
Couturier, "Mr Gérôme works for Goupil," Musée Goupil, Gérôme and Goupil: Art and Enterprise,
trans. Isabel Ollivier (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000), 20 fig. 5.

81
office as early as 1846, Gérôme was especially well-positioned to take advantage of the

burgeoning American market driven by the immense fortunes made during the Civil War and its

aftermath.8

For Edwin Weeks and other young American artists hoping to attract American buyers,

Parisian training at the École des Beaux-Arts in a well-known atelier under a master such as

Gérôme, combined with Salon recognition and established dealer connections, translated into

market credibility. In addition to its professional advantages Paris promised more bohemian

freedoms—flowing champagne, crowded cafes, vibrant boulevards and arcades, sophisticated

flâneurs. A staunch New Englander like Edwin Weeks must have viewed Paris as the center of

the cultural universe.

The lives of Parisian art students orbited around the École des Beaux-Arts. At this time a

typical course of instruction would have included classes in perspective drawing, history and

archaeology, aesthetics and art history, and, most importantly, anatomy. Life study, the bedrock

of French academic training, was seldom available in the United States (the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts being a notable exception). Writing in 1881, the Illinois-born sculptor

Lorado Taft described the typical École anatomy lecture as "an exhilarating spectacle" that

employed a stimulating rotation of mannequins, live models, cadavers, various pre-dissected

anatomical parts, skeletons, and écorchés (sculptures that revealed the muscles, sans skin).

Tuition was free and enrollment open, by competition, to any promising male applicant

regardless of nationality.9

8. Morton, 184.
9. Added in the mid-1870s were courses on General History, Ornamental Design, and Decorative Art.

82
 Admission to the École depended on successful performance in the demanding concours

des places. In this semi-annual competition, up to two hundred or more aspiring painters

competed for seventy openings. The first segment began with tests in anatomy and either

ornamental design or world history. A student's scores in the preliminary tests determined his

vantage point for the most taxing, and critical, part of the examination. This was the drawing

from the antique or from life, for two six-hour sessions, with students en loges—perched on

stools in front of easels, set in small three-sided stalls that discouraged communication. To

compound the difficulty for some Americans, instructions, questions and required responses

were of course given in French. Tests scores determined more than admission. For the

demanding and crowded École life class, successful matriculants were assigned positions

proximate to the model based on the concours des places rankings.10

Very likely Weeks learned of the intricacies of the École and its admissions process

through his colleagues in Boston, and particularly from artist J. Foxcroft Cole, twelve years

Weeks' senior. After apprenticing for several years (along with fellow draftsman Winslow

In the early 1880s instruction was offered in arts, sciences, sciences morales et belles-lettres, as well as a
supplementary lecture series. H. Barbara Weinberg, The Lure of Paris: Nineteenth-Century American
Painters and Their French Teachers (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991), 15.
10. For example, a question on perspective (July 1880) read: "Put into perspective on construction scale
a rectangular fountain surrounded by a wall, for which you have been given the plan and elevation.
Laying in of the shadows is not required; the direction in which light falls is left to the choice of the
competitors. You can leave on the answer sheet those construction lines which help to clarify the
delineation method that you used." A typical history question from the 1879 exam read: "Ancient history:
1) A summary map of Egypt with an indication of the principal monuments of antiquity. 2) Give some
indication of the state of ancient Gaul and its conquest by the Romans. Modern history: 1) What are the
dynasties that have followed one another in France from the fall of the Roman Empire to the fourteenth
century? Indicate for each dynasty the most celebrated king or kings. 2) Describe briefly the first
crusade; indicate the results." Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, 16– 17.

83
Homer) in the Boston lithographic studio of J. H. Bufford, Cole had ventured to Paris in 1860 to

study under Émile Lambinet (a pupil of Corot) and later under Charles-Emile Jacque, a member

of the Barbizon School. Cole was a serious student who made numerous contributions to the

Salon, beginning in 1866, as well as to the Royal Academy. Over many years and in various

ways Cole became an influential force for advancement of the French visual arts, from teaching

Gustave Doré how to speak English to bringing the first Corot to America.11

Likely spurred on by J. Foxcroft Cole, Edwin Weeks was determined to gain his place in

the epicenter of the art world, but first to enjoy a leisurely summer in Normandy. On June 28,

1874 Weeks sailed for Brest on the steamship Pereire in the company of Cole, Cole's family and

the Boston artist Albert Thompson (b. 1853).12 Weeks was no doubt looking forward to a

restorative holiday after toiling for months to raise money for the trip through sales of his

paintings through Elliott, Blakeslee and Noyes of Boston.13 Cole had a particular affection for

11. Robinson, 45–48.

12. "Passengers Sailed," New York Times (1857–1922), 28 June 1874: 5. On Thompson, see "Thompson,
Albert," Clara Erskine Clement and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works,
5th ed., vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1889), 293. Thompson was a capable portraitist and
an author (Elementary Perspective, 1878). He had a particular affinity for pastorals and cattle, with
works such as Cows grazing in a landscape, The Hay Wain (1877), Cattle on a Hillside, Landscape and
Cattle, and Cows in the Pasture. He had made at least one earlier trip to Europe: "In 1872, in company
with Rev. William S. Barnes . . . Thompson travelled four or five months in Great Britain and Continental
Europe, visiting, as he journeyed the famous galleries of art. Three years later he made a second trip
abroad, with the artists J. Foxcroft Cole and E. L. Weeks. After sketching for a time in Normandy, he
went to Paris and, during the winter of the same year, to Italy." Leander Thompson, Memorial of James
Thompson (Boston: L. Barta and Co., 1887), 217–18.
13. Boston gallery Blakeslee & Noyes continued to represent Weeks after his departure for France: "E. L.
Weeks has an Oriental street scene, a study of a fruit stand, that is good in color, and gives a graphic
picture of a street fruit stand." "The Fine Arts Exhibition at the Mechanic Fair," 6 col 4. See also the
following notices: an exhibition at the Boston Arts Club of "landscapes by Cole, Weeks and others," at
Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes "from the easels of two of our best artists, to be sold by auction Nov. 19 at 11
A.M. / E. L. Weeks, who is now in Paris, studying with Gerome, sends many of his best pictures, mostly
studies in the East, painted with great brilliancy of color, and fine effects of sunlight." "Art Items," Boston

84
Normandy, where a decade earlier he had befriended French painters Jules Héreau and Auguste

Bonheur at Cernay-la-Ville, near Paris. Sharing an admiration for the contemplative pastorals of

the Barbizon School, in 1870 Cole joined Héreau and Boston native William Mark Fisher (1841–

1923) for a season of sketching on the Normandy coast.14 To this area Cole returned in the

summer of 1874 with a party of Bostonians in tow.

The long, lazy days stretching before him, Edwin Weeks wrote of this summer idyll to a

friend in Boston:

We are here in this isolated house near the sea. Cole and family, Thompson and I.
Around us is the typical French landscape made familiar by Daubigny, De Cock,
Hereau, etc., slender poplars and willows, thatched roofs, corn fields and sea. But

Evening Transcript, 12 Nov. 1874, 1 col. 6; “Many of the readers of THE GLOBE have undoubtedly
visited the fine collection of paintings in the gallery of Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes, advertised to be sold at
auction on Thursday next. But two of our Boston artists are represented, Mr. E. L. Weeks and Mr. S. G.
W. Benjamin, both gentlemen who have attained high rank in their profession by purely legitimate means.
Mr. Weeks, as is well known, has made a specialty of Eastern subjects, and most of his works in the
present collection are scenes in Egypt and the Holy Land. One of the best, numbered “34” in the
catalogue, “The River Nile,” held a prominent place on the walls at the last Art Club Exhibition and
attracted particular attention. Better, even, in some respects, is No. 67, “A Nile Sunset,” the last picture,
we believe, from the brush of Mr. Weeks before his departure from the country. No. 40, “Pilgrim Caravan
at Damascus,” is full of good qualities, as also are Nos. 23 and 11, “A Bedouin Herdsman” and “The
Pyramids of Ghizeh.” Besides the paintings in oil, Mr. Weeks has two exceedingly meritorious water
colors in the sale, No. 24, “The Gate of Thomas, Damascus,” and No. 56, “Tower of Hippieus,
Jerusalem.” “The Fine Arts. The Sale at Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes’s.,” Boston Daily Globe, 16 Nov.
1874, 5; "The gallery of Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes is hung with a collection of paintings by E. L. Weeks
and S. G. W. Benjamin, to be sold by auction on Thursday. Those by Mr. Weeks are devoted to the
specialty of Eastern landscape and accessories, and some of the works show a marked advance over
anything heretofore shown by this artist," "The Fine Arts," Boston Evening Transcript 17 Nov. 1874, 5
col. 2; "The present exhibition at the rooms of the Boston Art Club strikes us as decidedly inferior to the
closing one of last season . . . . E. L. Weeks has a picture of a caravan halting in the desert, which presents
a great advance from his pictures of last year," "The Art Club Exhibition," Boston Evening Transcript, 29
Dec. 1874, 3 col. 4.
14. Robinson, Living New England Artists, 45–47. Fisher subsequent moved to England where his
impressionist style was well received. George Moore called him "An admirable painter, the best, the only
landscape painter of our time." George Moore, Modern Painting (London: Walter Scott Publishing Co.,
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, revised edition 1906), 251.

85
 it is quite beautiful and the color is soft and gray. Our subjects are all within a
few minutes walk of the house. We work and live mostly in the open air, and vary
this truly pastoral and Homeric existence by a daily swim in the sea. It is harvest
time; the people with wooden shoes are abroad in the hay fields, and there are
poppies in the yellow grain. In fair weather we work ten hours a day on and off,
and sleep ten at a stretch. Cole expects Hereau and Fisher next month. 15

The subject of the somewhat awkwardly composed, heavily shadowed Normandy Farmyard

near Honfleur (1874, Figure 3-3), a small canvas attributed to Weeks, demonstrates the influence

of J. Foxcroft Cole and his circle.

By September 1874 Weeks was settled in Paris, but the process by which he applied to

the École des Beaux-Arts remains unclear. None of Weeks' papers mention the concours des

places or study in the French ateliers. If Weeks stood for the autumn series of admittance exams,

he would have undertaken them in the company of Chicagoan J. Carroll Beckwith (1852–1917).

Fearing the worst for his chances of admittance—a fear not misplaced—Beckwith wrote in his

diary on October 13th:

I do not think as yet that I am going to be accepted and if I were not I should
feel like eating several of the committee. On Monday the 28th September we
began with perspective and I think I did well. Anatomy came the same
Wednesday it was very unfair but I did as the others [,] took my charts and
made a nice copy of the Thorax side view. Monday following we drew from
the ornament. Three days of two hours each concluded this and then we were
allotted from these drawings our position for the life, I had 34 points and came
the 13th from the head in my series which was far from bad but the test has
begun this week in the life and how I am coming out remains to be seen, half
or more now trying will have to stand being left out as they only admit 80
perhaps my drawing may be considered to belong to the unlucky pile. 16

15. "Mr. E. L. Weeks writes to an artist of this city from Normandy, where he is devoting the summer to
painting in the company of J. Foxcroft Cole . . .," "Personal," Daily Evening Transcript, 22 August 1874,
4 col. 2.
16. Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, 18; quoting the J. Carroll Beckwith diary, October 13, 1874, National
Academy of Design, New York; in Kathleen Burnside, "James Carroll Beckwith (1852–1917): His

86
Beckwith did not perform as well as he had hoped. That autumn only two Americans, J. Alden

Weir and John Singer Sargent, passed the "the great and terrible examination," as it was

described by Sargent.17

Rather than submit to the arduous concours des places, Weeks probably applied directly

to Gérôme, the chef d'atelier. Gérôme was known for circumventing the competitive process; he

frequently admitted foreign students to his atelier under the designation élèves libres, a category

that excluded them from competing for the Prix de Rome.18 This would not have been a special

hardship for Weeks as the Prix de Rome scholarship was not open to Americans. A letter from

Gérôme preserved in the archives of the École des Beaux-Arts authorized Weeks to enter his

atelier on September 22, 1874.19 Before he could begin, Weeks would have had to present this

letter to the minister of fine arts for approval as well as obtain a letter of introduction from the

American diplomatic legation.

French Training and His American Career" (manuscript, City University of New York Graduate School,
1984), 13.
17. H. Barbara Weinberg, "Sargent and Carolus-Duran," in Marc Simpson, Uncanny Spectacle: The
Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent (New Haven: Yale University Press; Williamstown, MA,
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; 1997), 23; the quotation is from a letter from Sargent to Charles
Heath Wilson. Sargent attended classes in Bonnat's atelier in the evenings. Weir enrolled in the studio of
Jean-Léon Gérôme, about which he writes extensively; see Dorothy Weir Young, The Life and Letters of
J. Alden Weir (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960).
18. H. Barbara Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, 17. Gérôme first admitted Americans to his atelier in 1866
only at the request of the American Legation. They were Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Conrad Diehl (born
Germany), Thomas Eakins, sculptor Howard Roberts and Earl Shinn. Fort, 27, citing Legation des États-
Unis to the French Minister, October 12, 1866, in Eakins Papers, Archives, Philadelphia Museum of Art
(microfilm, Archives American Art, roll P10, fr. 563).
19. Weinberg, American Pupils, 51, citing Archives Nationales, Paris, Archives de l'Ecole Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Dossiers individuels des élèves. Série antérieure au 31 decembre 1893
(AJ52:273, Weeks). See also Weinberg, "Nineteenth-Century American Painters at the École des Beaux-
Arts," American Art Journal 13, no. 4 (Autumn 1981): 66–84, at 81.

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 However, Edwin Lord Weeks' name is not recorded on the atelier register nor does it

appear in the matriculant's registers. To further the confusion, the Salon catalogues of 1898 and

1899 as well as that of the Exposition Universelle of 1900 state that Weeks was a student of the

École des Beaux-Arts but a pupil of Léon Bonnat.20 All nineteenth-century Paris Salon catalogue

entries for Weeks (1878, 1880–82, 1884–92, 1894–99) indicate that he was an "élève de Bonnat"

with no mention of Gérôme.21 An article on Weeks in the November 1881 issue of La Vie

Moderne states that "il entra, en 1875, à l'École des Beaux-Arts et à l'atelier Bonnat où il termina

ses études," with no reference to Gérôme.22 Although the Boston Evening Transcript reported on

November 12, 1874 that Weeks was "now in Paris, studying with Gerome [sic]," and on

December 23rd that "Weeks is studying in Gerome's [sic] studio," it seems that he never formally

enrolled.23 However, these early newspaper accounts do explain why in published sources there

has been over a century of confusion about Weeks' Paris training, repeated over the years

beginning in the 1870s and including early authorities such as Richard Muther in his 1896

20. Weinberg, American Pupils, 51; The Lure of Paris, 17.

21. Lois Marie Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth Century Paris Salons (Washington, DC: National
Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 403.
22. B. Mariott, "Les Peintres Explorateurs: Edwin Lord Weeks," La Vie Moderne 3 (19 Nov. 1881): 749–
50. This article draws partially on S.G.W. Benjamin's essay on Weeks.
23. Of an exhibition marking the first social meeting of Boston Art Club on Saturday: "landscapes by
Cole, Weeks and others" were sent. In the same article: "At Elliot, Blakeslee & Noyes's there is now on
exhibition a collection of choice pictures from the easels of two of our best artists, to be sold by auction
Nov. 19 at 11 A.M. [par] E. L. Weeks, who is now in Paris, studying with Gerome, sends many of his best
pictures, mostly studies in the East, painted with great brilliancy of color, and fine effects of sunlight,"
"Art Items," Boston Evening Transcript, 12 Nov. 1874, 1 col. 6. From a December article: "Cole has
settled in an apartment in Paris with his family. Enneking is also settled there, industriously studying
French art. Weeks is studying in Gerome's studio," "Art Items," Boston Evening Transcript, 23 Dec.
1874, 4 col. 5.

88
History of Modern Painting, in which he states that Weeks was a pupil of Gérôme.24

This is not to assert that early in his career (and perhaps even later) Weeks did not benefit

from some informal association with Gérôme, although that possibility is not corroborated by

any known textual evidence other than the letter from Gérôme mentioned above. As H. Barbara

Weinberg suggests, the young American's extensive travels in Syria and Egypt, accomplished at

such an early age, would have impressed Gérôme. Weinberg has concluded that, regardless of

whether Weeks was formally enrolled in the atelier, "there is every likelihood that he enjoyed

private criticism from Gérôme, and developed his mature style very much under Gérôme's

influence."

The Ateliers of Gérôme and Bonnat

Regardless of the news articles and many Salon catalogue entries that record Weeks'

enduring affiliation with Bonnat, according to Weinberg it was Gérôme who ultimately claimed

Weeks' artistic allegiance. Indeed, Weinberg states that Weeks' post-1884 Salon entries indicate a

gradual rejection of Bonnat's painterly style and "reveal instead Weeks's consistent devotion to a

meticulous linear technique very similar to that of Gérôme."25 In support of this view, Weinberg

analyses three paintings by Edwin Lord Weeks relative to Gérôme's style and subject choices:

The Great Mogul and His Court Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India (c. 1886); The

24. Richard Muther, The History of Modern Painting, Vol. 4 (London: Henry and Co., 1896; rev. ed.
London: J. M. Dent and Co., New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1907), 295–96. Muther noted Weeks,
Frederick A. Bridgman and Harry Humphrey Moore as pupils of Gérôme.
25. Weinberg, American Pupils, 51.

89
Last Journey, Souvenir of the Ganges, Benares (Salon, 1885); and Street Scene in India, (ca.

1884–88).

Before further considering these three paintings and Weinberg's assessment that they

reveal Gérôme's prevailing influence, it is well to consider carefully Weeks' association with the

teacher whom he consistently acknowledged, Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat (1833–1922).

Originally from Bayonne, in the mid-1870s Bonnat headed an independent Paris atelier. He

assumed this position in 1866; under his guidance the Atelier Bonnat was the only independent

atelier in Paris to rival those of the École des Beaux-Arts. Bonnat was trained in the Academic

tradition, had attended the École des Beaux-Arts, and was awarded the Prix de Rome. In the

1880s he became a professor of the École des Beaux-Arts and later its Director. Despite his

intimate connections with the French art establishment, Bonnat was highly skeptical of École

training and remained independent in his approach to teaching and in his evaluation of style and

method. Bonnat was known for a new integrative approach to painting that synthesized the

Academic tradition with a more direct, objective study of nature. Art historian Alisa Luxenberg

has noted that Bonnat saw himself as a reformer who challenged École ideals by emphasizing

manual technique over abstract concepts, and was determined to offer his students more

instruction and practice in painting than provided by the École.

The "study of nature" was the working premise of the Atelier Bonnat. Though Bonnat

was known for his openness to subject and style, pursuit of idealization or highly wrought,

decorative approaches were not tolerated. The atelier's singular focus on "nature" implied the

pursuit of a comprehensive study of anatomy, perspective, modeling, the scientific study of the

human form, all demonstrated in the context of a forthright, logical representation of space. The

90
paramount concern was the emphasis on modeling form in strong light; subjects, methods and

materials were secondary (Figure 3-4).26

Barclay Day's 1882 article on "L'Atelier Bonnat" in the Magazine of Art provides first-

hand insights into the inner workings of the studio, which he described as founded on "the

wholesome purpose of studying nature as closely as possible, avoiding on the one hand the

vagueness of the impressionists, and on the other the conventionalism of the academical style of

work, upon which the followers of Bonnat look with undisguised contempt."27 The admission

process for Edwin Weeks would have been quite straightforward: after calling upon M. Bonnat

and gaining permission to attend, the prospective student would simply pay the entrance fee (25

francs) and subscription fee (360 francs, payable monthly), and be prepared to set to work at

seven in the morning in the summer, eight in the winter. Fresh models were posed every

Monday, with students deciding by majority vote as to whether the pose was satisfactory. The

atelier occupied a lofty room of about thirty feet square, with a large window before which the

nude model posed on a table near the stove. In the corners and against the walls lay a jumble of

broken easels, racks for canvases, a skeleton dangling from a stand (said to be a student who did

not pay his subscription), a few abused and broken plaster casts, and some rudimentary supplies

for washing up. For the students' edification, on the walls hung a portion of Bonnat's impressive

collection of Old Master drawings as well as some paintings by Bonnat's contemporaries. The

26. Alisa Luxenberg, "Léon Bonnat (1833–1922)," (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1990), 216, 219,
222–23.
27. As there were no Impressionists identifiable as such when the atelier was founded, Day must be
considering this in the longer retrospective sense. Barclay Day, "L'Atelier Bonnat," Magazine of Art 5
(1882): 138–40 at 138.

91
students perched on stools and easels graduated in height, all arranged in semi-circles around the

model table. Those closest to the model worked on studies of the head; those in the rear, seated

atop the tallest stools, took advantage of a broader view; those in the very back row stood before

their easels to work on larger canvases. Day described the typical student encounter with

Bonnat, a man of "Modesty, energy, and straightforward frankness":

We were left entirely to our own devices during the first day of the week; on
the second the "patron" came round to see how we had blocked-in our studies,
and again on the last to see what we had made of them. His plan was to leave
each pupil absolutely free to follow his own inclinations in all matters pertaining
to choice of subject, method of work, and materials; and whether we did a study
of a head, a half-length, or an entire figure, whether we worked in charcoal, in red
or black chalk, or in colour, was all the same to him, so long as he thought we
were doing our best. His attention was always directed to the study as a whole,
and he was a cheery and encouraging critic—always praising when he
conscientiously could, but always telling us very decidedly what was bad in our
work . . . . each pupil got on an average four or five minutes at each visit. When
one's turn came, one would suddenly hear over one's shoulder, in rapid and rather
staccato utterance, some such phrase as this: "That's not bad; but . . . you must
look at the figure more as a whole;" and then he would point out the faults of
proportion which prevented the ensemble, the "swabble," from being good. He
was very particular that the gesture of the figure should be true, and that the type
and character of face and form should be emphasised, even if ugly in nature. 28

Students appreciated the Atelier Bonnat for its rare combination of artistic freedom,

disciplined bonhomie (unlike the wild atmosphere that reigned in a few other ateliers),

28. Day, 139. William Eugene Harward recalled of the Atelier-Bonnat: "there are about fifty members of
the class I should judge, although the number who daily attend is about thirty. I paint, or at least draw, at
the school every day; we have the best models to be found. The working hours are from 7 1/2 a.m. until
noon, and the price paid to the model is four francs for the five hours work. Bonnat comes round
Wednesday morning and examines what we have done, and as he is now acknowledged to be one of the
first of living artists, having taken all the prizes possible to take at the 'salon,' we listen to all he says with
great attention. Saturday he comes again; he receives no compensation for this, beyond the honor, which
in France is considered very high, of instructing this class, which is the most select in Paris." Francis
Edward Clark, Life of William Eugene Harward (Portland: Hoyt, Fogg and Donham, 1879), 90.

92
individualized attention, and knowledgeable and earnest direction from the patron. Unlike the

intimidating Gérôme, Bonnat never took over the brush or pencil to correct a student's work, but

encouraged his pupils to help one another to solve technical difficulties through experimentation

and, if necessary, failure.29 However, students' fierce loyalties to Bonnat rested on more than the

companionable atmosphere of his studio, his sincere manner, professional achievements and

reputation as "the first portrait painter, and one of the great artists of the day" (Figure 3-5).30

Bonnat was viewed as thoughtfully defiant, advanced, independent, intellectual (Figure 3-6).31

This opinion of Bonnat was forcefully expressed by American artist Edwin Blashfield as

he weighed the decision of whether to join the atelier of Bonnat or that of Gérôme. Already

accepted by Gérôme, Blashfield was to enter the studio of "the world-famous painter" in three

months' time. For the interim, Gérôme advised Blashfield to enroll in the Atelier Bonnat, saying

"You must not lose your time. Go to Bonnat until then; his is an open school (atelier

indépendent), and there is no better man in Europe to teach you." However, like Edwin Weeks,

even though Blashfield had been accepted as a student by Gérôme, he chose to remain at the

Atelier Bonnat:

When three months had passed, and I might have entered the Beaux-Arts,
I liked the Atelier Bonnat too well to leave it; I had stumbled unwittingly upon
a new order of things, a new order which pleased me very much. These young
men represented the opposition, not only in political demonstrations, to which

29. Day, 140.

30. "M. Bonnat," Architect 23 (7 February 1880): 93–94, at 93.
31. "Actuellement, c'est lui qui est en réalité le plus puissant et le plus solide de nos peintres." Émile
Zola, Salons, recueillis, annotés et présentés, vol. 63 of Société de publications romanes et françaises, ed.
Frederick W. J. Hemmings, Robert J. Niess (E. Droz, 1959), 208.

93
 the whole atelier went religiously "pour ennuyer le gouvernment," but, what was
much more important, in art.32

Blashfield, inspired by the "forceful truth," "vigor" and "honesty" of Bonnat's work, perceived

that Bonnat had turned away from the artificiality of "official painting" in favor of an appeal

directly to nature, to close observation of the human form, to the dramatic works of Velasquez,

Rembrandt and seventeenth-century Spanish Tenebrist Jusepe de Ribera. He admired the manner

in which Bonnat interpreted earlier masters' interests in strong light and shadow, variable

brushwork and illusionistic modeling to suggest form and space. Moreover, he was impressed

by Bonnat's insistence that these elements be applied precisely towards the deliberate pursuit of

the artist's vision rather than employed to replicate an approved formula.

To this end, Blashfield recalled of Bonnat that "Construction, values, and texture have

always been his watchwords:"

M. Bonnat painted vigorously, with a full brush, and the pupils imputed a magical
property to the thick laying on of paint, not seeing that the stroke must be laid
upon exactly the right spot, that the value and color must be exactly right, else this
robust way of painting would only emphasize blunders. I remember very well
that for at least eighteen months after my arrival thin painting meant to me the last
expression of weakness . . . " 33

Yet, much to Blashfield's surprise, Bonnat was critical of the indiscriminate layering of paint. He

recalled Bonnat's admonition to a student, "Why do you use so much paint? you only hamper

yourself. I do not do so for the sake of painting thickly, but only because I get my effect better in

that way." Blashfield continued:

32. E[dwin] H. Blashfield, "Léon Bonnat," in John Charles Van Dyke, ed., Modern French Masters, a
series of biographical and critical reviews (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896), 48–49.
33. Blashfield, 49, 51.

94
 Every great artist has some dominant characteristic in expression, some dominant
characteristic in technic. Of M. Bonnat it may be affirmed that at the central core
of his artistic nature is the desire for forceful truth, that the central quality of his
technic is vigor, that is to say, the choice of the strongest lights and the darkest
shadows, for the most powerful expression of that same truth.34

Blashfield's memories of the Atelier Bonnat suggest how Edwin Weeks may have

perceived the work of Bonnat and how he may have translated the patron's example and

guidance into his own visual language. Evidently Bonnat encouraged his students' individuality

of expression and technique. He preached close study of the manner in which great artists

handled paint in order to achieve illusion, drama, space, three-dimensionality, emotion; but

nothing suggests that Bonnat found any merit in stylistic imitation for its own sake.

In addition, Blashfield's choice to pursue his training at the Atelier Bonnat prompts the

question of whether Weeks underwent a similar decision process. That is, after receiving an

acceptance letter from Gérôme in September 1874, then enrolling in the Atelier Bonnat (perhaps

with Gérôme's encouragement), did Weeks elect to continue his professional training under an

instructor whose work he felt was more innovative, intellectually and emotionally honest? This

would not have been a discounting of the extraordinary achievements of Gérôme, nor an implied

statement that there was little to learn from or admire in Gérôme's oeuvre. Rather, it was a

decision to be open to the new, to be independent, to be modern.35

34. Blashfield, 50.

35. "Many leading artists, like Bonnat, Laurens, Munkacsy, and Carolus Duran, take pupils at about the
same moderate rate. This meets the wants of men who cannot get into the Beaux-Arts, or who do not care
to try, because they think it too academical, or object to its many holidays, or fancy a particular master
outside." "The American Student at the Beaux-Arts," Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, n.s. 23, no. 1
(Nov. 1881–Apr. 1882): 272–85 at 266.

95
 This must have been an exceptionally difficult choice to make. Given Weeks' passion for

adventurous travel and his early experiences in Egypt and North Africa, twenty-five-year-old

Edwin Weeks would naturally have seen a potential mentor and kindred spirit in the world-

famous, fiftyish Gérôme. By the time Weeks arrived in Paris, Gérôme had traveled extensively

through the Balkans, Turkey and North Africa. Gérôme's visualizations of the East were

powerfully imaginative and virtuosic in execution. Ultimately Gérôme's studio paintings of a

sensualized, exoticized East, characterized by uncanny attention to detail, devotion to minute

archaeological and ethnographic description, and nearly photographic finish, informed most of

his artistic production.36

But other factors may have deterred Edwin Weeks from formal study with Gérôme and

fostered his interest in Bonnat. At the second exhibition of the Boston Art Club, the submissions

of Weeks and his colleagues were decidedly trumped by Léon Bonnat's Figures, "the gem of the

collection."37 Gérôme did not always merit such unalloyed praise. Gerard Ackerman, author of

The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, summarizes the chief contemporaneous complaints as:

. . . miscalculated Realism, coldness, the studied quality of his work, his

preference for finish over an interesting facture, his fondness for genre and
anecdotes, and his limits as an ethnographic painter.38

John Ruskin, in an 1867 letter to French art critic and writer Ernest Chesneau that lamented the

pitiable state of the world in general and of fine art in particular, named Gérôme "an indecent

36. Weinberg, American Pupils, 20.

37. "The Art Club Exhibition," Boston Evening Transcript, 7 May 1874.
38. Ackerman, 84.

96
modeller in clay instead of a painter."39 A year later Chesneau, an early supporter of Manet and

Whistler, likened Gérôme's paintings to genre masquerading as historical studies:

He certainly accords an important part [of his thought] to the composition, but he
is far from taking the subjects to their most moving aspect. It seems that M.
Gérôme is afraid of emotion, and systematically evades it. And emotion takes its
vengeance in remaining for its part rather far from the painter, who is, to sum it
up, very respectable in intentions and very clever in execution.40

None of Edwin Weeks' writings hint at his opinion of Gérôme, his work or his instructional

methods, but the recollections of one of Weeks' contemporaries, American artist Will H. Low

(1853–1932) perhaps edges closer to it than the views of Ruskin or Chesneau. Low's brief

memoir of Gérôme appeared in Modern French Masters, the same 1896 volume that published

Blashfield's reminiscences of the Atelier Bonnat. The nineteen-year-old American enrolled in

Gérôme's atelier in 1873, the year before Weeks arrived in Paris and long after Gérôme's

international reputation was well established. From the vantage of over two decades later Low

observed that:

the essential characteristic of Gérôme's work is absolute completeness in every

detail, a completeness only attained by the patient brush-stroke adding each day
its quota of accurately expressed form . . . . a style which rigorously prohibits
work that stops before the final touch is given . . . 41

39. John Ruskin to Ernest Chesneau, 13 February 1867 in John Ruskin, Letters from John Ruskin to
Ernest Chesneau, ed. Thomas A. Wise (London: n.p., 1894), 5–6.

40. Ackerman, 84 and note 249 citing Ernest Chesneau, Peinture, sculpture, Les nations rivales dans l'art
(Paris: 1868), 220.
41. Will H. Low, "Jean-Léon Gérôme," in John Charles Van Dyke, ed., Modern French Masters, a series
of biographical and critical reviews (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896), 31–43 at 32.

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Completeness, in the Victorian art critical sense of meticulous attention to detail and finish, is

unquestionably a hallmark of Gérôme's work. Stasis is another. Though often somewhat flexible

in his assessment of his students' work, in his own practice (as opposed to the beliefs held by

Bonnat) Gérôme was indifferent to the innovations of Corot, Millet and certainly of Manet,

whom he called "the apostle of a decadent manner, of a piecemeal art." Not surprisingly, he

found the work of Gustave Caillebotte "rubbish."42

Low's recollections demonstrate that he, and perhaps Weeks, believed that the

internationally famous Gérôme was an artist rooted in time and place, bound to the artistic ideals

that conformed to those of an earlier generation. In a word, he was not modern:

Gérôme's right to be considered modern is therefore almost purely intellectual.

His point of view—the manner in which he regards the scene which he is to
portray and the actors who are to fill it—is essentially of his time. It is more—it
is Gallic, almost locally Parisian.43

Will Low found in his last sight of Gérôme, impeccably dressed in a coat of military cut as he

walked away from a funeral, a metaphor for the great artist's career:

It is thus that I last saw him, it is thus that I like to think of him—as of a soldier
who early in the campaign received his marching orders, and who, faithful to his
duty, has followed unflinchingly in the path which they indicate, looking neither
to the right nor the left.

The nineteen-year-old Will Low's admiration for Gérôme, mingled with a certain

disenchantment, amplifies the understanding of Edwin Blashfield's decision to turn down

42. Laurens des Cars, Dominique de Font-Réaulx and Édouard Papet, "Picturing Gérôme," in Laurence
des Cars, Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Édouard Papet, ed., The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme
(1824–1904) (Milan: Skira Editore; Los Angeles: Getty Museum; Paris: Musée d'Orsay, 2010), 17–20 at
20 (quotations not cited).
43. Low, 36.

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enrollment in the atelier of Gérôme in favor of studying with Bonnat. Regardless, Blashfield's

preference for the Atelier Bonnat did not hinder him from taking full advantage of Gérôme's

generosity and willingness to "give time and attention to young men" and to critique his work "as

often as I wished." H. Barbara Weinberg remarks that this association led to a predictable

affinity in the works of Blashfield and Gérôme, evident in paintings such as Blashfield's The

Emperor Commodus [dressed as Hercules] Leaving the Arena at the Head of the Gladiators

(Salon, 1878, Figure 3-7), which echoes Gérôme's meticulously researched Roman

reconstructions. This association did not escape the notice of contemporary critics, who

frequently invoked the name of Gérôme in reviews of Blashfield's earlier paintings.44 Weinberg

maintains that the Beaux-arts principles of Gérôme underlie even Blashfield's later paintings and

murals, the basis for his mature reputation.

Clearly Blashfield's elaborate allegories and historically based compositions owed a

significant intellectual and stylistic debt to Gérôme, one that was readily apparent to

contemporary viewers and one that was acknowledged by Blashfield himself. It is therefore

reasonable for Weinberg to propose that there was a similar informal mentoring arrangement

with another of Bonnat's American pupils, Edwin Weeks, that likewise resulted in a lasting

thematic and stylistic influence in his work.

44. Weinberg, American Pupils, 56, quoting Edwin Blashfield in "Open Letters: American Artists on
Gérôme," Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 37 (Feb. 1889): 635. For example, Blashfield's work
was likened to that of Gérôme by the Art Journal in "Notes," Art Journal 5 (1879): 31–32 and by the
New York Times in "New Pictures at the Schaus Gallery," 29 Nov. 1878, n.p.

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Considering Weeks and Gérôme

Few art historians have given Edwin Weeks much more than a passing reference in the

past hundred years. Therefore a well-argued analysis of his work by an eminent art historian

such as H. Barbara Weinberg is not only exceptional but also highly influential.45 For this reason

the comments of Weinberg, currently Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and

Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art, must be considered in depth.

As mentioned earlier, Weinberg finds Gérôme's influence ascendant over the more

painterly style of Bonnat in Weeks' The Great Mogul and His Court Returning from the Great

Mosque at Delhi, India (c. 1886), The Last Journey (Voyage), Souvenir of the Ganges, Benares

(Salon, 1885), and Street Scene in India (ca. 1884–88). These paintings will be discussed in

detail below, with particular regard for Weinberg's assertion that throughout his career Weeks

remained a follower of Gérôme.

Weinberg compares Week's Street Scene in the East (now titled Street Scene in India, ca.

1884–88, oil on canvas, 28 7/8 x 23 3/4 inches, Figure 3-8) with Gérôme's Saddle Bazaar (at the

Haggin Museum, The Saddle Bazaar, Cairo, 1883, oil on canvas, 32 x 25 5/8 inches, Figure 3-9),

noting in particular that the images share an obliquely viewed, highly detailed "architectural

corner" featuring carefully observed animals and "Near Eastern types."46 These paintings are

undeniably similar in certain respects: the size of the canvas, the red awning or rugs denoting the

45. Although Weinberg discusses Weeks in only a few pages in her 1984 book The American Pupils of
Jean-Léon Gérôme, her arguments have been relied on by other influential scholars, among them Annette
Blaugrund in Paris 1889: American Artists at the Universal Exposition (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 42–43, 223–24.
46. Weinberg, American Pupils, 51–53.

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shopfront, the side view of the white horse, the sharply detailed saddlery and costume of the

rider, the red hues that lead the eye around the canvas, and the overall conception grounded in

orientalized Victorian genre.

Certainly Gérôme's reputation for the portrayal of a spectrum of North African "types"

was well known to Weeks. In fact, in a letter written by Weeks from Rabat during the height of

the 1878 Moroccan famine, it seems that Weeks was eager to surpass it: "There are magnificent

types grand looking old men squalid Arab girls with faces like African Madonnas and such

lustrous eyes . . . such as Gerome [sic] has never rendered because in ordinary times nothing

could induce these people to pose or enter the house of a Christian."47 Street Scene in India may

be read as an attempt to "out-Gérôme" Gérôme, not only by including South Asian "types," but

also by jamming so much detail and substructure into the composition—the balcony fretwork,

the lackadaisical stitching on the awning—that the viewer longs to follow those strong

architectural diagonals right off of the canvas in search of relief.

While the painting may by read as a variation on Gérôme's leading brand of French

Orientalism, to read it solely that way omits an important, and constant, dimension in Weeks'

work. Weeks consistently strived to convey a personal interpretation of India based on the

astounding sensory experience of being in that country—the heat, the colors, the intense light,

the architecture, the pageantry, the sensual in the everyday. Gérôme quiets the architecture in

order to highlight the richly accessorized figures of the Bashi-Bazouk and his gleaming steed;

Weeks characteristically makes the architecture the subject, drawing attention to it with surface

47. Weeks to Alexander Twombly, 8 December 1878, Rabat, 4, Alexander S. Twombly Papers, Box 1,
Folder 001 0002, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

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texture, minute detail and subtle color harmonies. Following Bonnat, he punctuates it with

thickened paint, caring little for the glazed plane that characterizes Gérôme's work. Weeks

meandered through the streets in search of this "seductive woodwork." He studied it; he wrote

about it; he tried to capture its worn patina and roughened surface in his paintings.48 The

architecture, with its finely wrought balconies, dominates Weeks' composition; the shopkeeper in

shadows, the customers who inspect his wares, the half hidden "young ladies of the nautch-

dancing sisterhood" are almost incidental.49

From a compositional standpoint, the two artists use architecture in distinctly different

ways. Here Gérôme employs it to enclose space. The broad, low step that leads the eye into the

picture ends abruptly in the middle ground, cut off by a massive pillar that halves the canvas and

by a wall that runs parallel to the picture plane. In contrast, the entire architectural façade in

Weeks' painting is set at an oblique angle; strong receding diagonals manage to defeat the

weightiness of the balconies to suggest continuity and openness. The cropped figure to the

extreme right adds to the sense of space beyond the frame. Admittedly, both Saddle Bazaar and

Street Scene in India project a sense of frozen staginess, but Gérôme's is that of an elaborate,

48. This may be seen in works such as Craftsmen Selling Cases by a Teak-Wood Building, Ahmedabad (c.
1885), Soldier of the Rajah Coming to the Sword Sharpener of Ahmedabad (c. 1886), and Teak-wood
Doorway, Ahmedabad (n.d.). In Lahore and Ahmedabad, Weeks searched for the most appealing
examples of decorative architecture, delighting in the deeply-carved balconies and finely wrought
supports, the home or shopfront whose "whole facade is often covered with a wealth of carving, painted
with tints which are rather gaudy when new, but which are exquisitely beautiful when half effaced and
weather-worn." Weeks, From the Black Sea through Persia and India, 330–31.
49. Given that the upper-left quarter of Street Scene in India closely resembles "Carved Balconies,"
reproduced in Weeks' 1894 Harper's article "Lahore and the Punjaub," it is likely that Street Scene depicts
a shopfront in Lahore. "Over these shops and lower stories there are often balconies of carved wood . . .
and they are usually occupied by young ladies of the nautch-dancing sisterhood . . .," Weeks, "Lahore and
the Punjaub," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 89, no. 533 (Oct. 1894): 651–73, 662.

102
carefully crafted theater set while Weeks' is that of a still from a film shot on location.

It is this stage set quality that most directly associates certain works by Edwin Weeks

with those of Jean-Léon Gérôme. Among his paintings of Cairo, this characteristic is particularly

evident in Weeks' A Game of Chess in [a] Cairo Street (1879, Figure 3-10). The subject and

composition are defined by a diagonally receding, highly elaborated architectural façade, the

elements Weeks employed to similar effect in Street Scene in India. Again Weeks focused more

on the architecture than the figures. Compared to similar scenes by Gérôme, Weeks employed a

marginally looser technique, more textural variation, a brighter palette, and notably less

imagination. Otherwise, structural parallels to depictions of similar subjects by Gérôme such as

A Street Scene in Cairo (1870–71), Chess Players (1859) and Almehs playing Chess in a Café

(1870) are readily apparent.

Yet there are important differences. For example, the central figures in Gérôme's Chess

Players (at the Wallace Collection, entitled The Draught Players, Figure 3-11) are impressively

armed, linking even this congenial pastime to endemic social violence. The standing onlooker's

teacup poised in his right hand imparts a refined note but hardly detracts from the intimidating

weapons just a few inches below his fingers. Absorbed in the next move, each player rests an

arm against a formidable blade, as if ready to take the symbolic war on the game board to a real

field of battle. None of the figures conveys a particular mental acuity. One sits back from the

board and raises his hand to his mouth, a gesture of uncertainty or recognition of vulnerability;

his opponent languidly smokes from a long chibouk as he contemplates the next move. The

blue-robed figure standing in the doorway in Weeks' A Game of Chess (Figure 3-10) suggests the

same passivity and indolence, although without the undertones of violence that frequently appear

103
in the works of Gérôme. Also, Weeks' players lean over the board, undistracted by other

pursuits. They are more engaged with the game, and by implication, with the world around

them.

It is tempting to see the influence of Gérôme in other paintings by Edwin Weeks from

this period. His ambitious Interior of a Mosque at Cordova (ca. 1880; 56 in. x 72 9/16 in.,

Figure 3-12) finds a ready comparison in Gérôme's Public Prayer in the Mosque of Amr (1871;

35 x 29.5 in., Figure 3-13), that Gerard Ackerman calls "The first and greatest of Gérôme's

mosque interiors."50 Interior of a Mosque at Cordova does indeed give the impression that

Weeks is consciously trying to demonstrate his technical accomplishments and his mastery of the

Orientalist genre dominated by Gérôme. As in Public Prayer in the Mosque of Amr, Weeks'

worshippers are sturdy and muscular or wiry and taut. The central figures in both paintings are

richly outfitted with impressive weaponry and framed against a series of banded arches that

recede into the background. Perhaps most reminiscent of Gérôme is the crisp precision of

Interior of a Mosque at Cordova combined with meticulous attention to imitation of surfaces and

materials. Weeks' draftsmanship and perspectival skills are on full display in the darkly

illuminated, voluminous space. If the painting is overstuffed with hanging lamps, trims and

tassels, each adds to the cumulative authenticating effect. On close inspection the columns do

indeed appear to be marble; the shield in the foreground gleams softly like old hammered metal;

the floor looks aged to a warm polish; the expanse of carpet seems rough with worn knots.

Practically every inch is worked into a fever pitch of near-claustrophobic detail, which was a key

50. Ackerman, 228 and notes Figure 200.

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selling point even as late as Weeks' estate auction in 1905:

Preaching the holy war against the Christians, the old Moor holds aloft the
green flag of Mohammed, while he curses the "dogs of Christians" with true
religious fervor, and calls on Mohammed to drive them out of Spain. The
devout audience, kneeling facing the shrine, composed of all classes of Moors,
rich and poor, as well as soldiers in armor, is probably an ideal and almost
photographic view of the Mosque of Cordova as it was at the beginning of the
downfall of Moorish power in Spain. The entrance to the shrine is most artistic,
composed of many-colored glass mosaics, with texts from the Koran set in.
Down the long vista of arches the crowd of worshippers gives one some idea of
the enormous size of the mosque, that stands to-day an imposing monument of the
grandeur and power of the Moors several hundred years ago.51

Although the description rings a bit of salesroom hyperbole, the writer's insistence on "almost

photographic" fidelity does not. The gold-leafed tiles of the mihrab, a tenth-century expansion,

mimic the actual architecture in color, pattern and proportion, as do those of the trifoil arches.

Weeks closely approximated the gold Kufic characters, inscriptions that proclaim God's

omniscience and the believers' duty of total submission. The figures may be drawn from the

imagination, but the setting accurately reflects what Weeks saw.

Though Weeks' attention to minute detail thoroughly follows the standards set by

Gérôme, the surface of his canvas does not. Generous dabs of paint on the hanging lamp, the

cloak of the central figure and various ornaments disturb the planes of the canvas, catching the

eye and drawing attention to the tactile surface. The strong contrast of light and dark, a practice

advocated by Bonnat, splits Weeks' canvas neatly in half as it adds drama to the scene; Gérôme

51. "No. 269 Mosque at Cordova, Spain," Millet, Works of the Late Edwin Lord Weeks: Important
Finished Pictures, Sketches, Studies and Drawings, n.p. The obvious comparison to Gérôme's Public
Prayer in the Mosque of Amr does not mean that Weeks may not have been aware of or influenced by
other artists. Spain was a favored destination of many artists; images of Spain's most well-known sights
were commonly reproduced in a variety of formats (for example, David Robert's Picturesque Sketches in
Spain Taken During the Years 1832 & 1833 (London: Hodgson and Graves, 1837).

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uses darker tones primarily in the four corners to frame the interior. Gérôme's long-haired,

nearly nude holy man in the background refers to an exoticized East likely to evoke little

understanding or respect from Parisian viewers. Weeks' corresponding figure, aged and holding

a battered flag, may have been perceived by viewers as an object of scorn or even pity, yet it

would not have violated the Western sense of propriety in the same way. Similarly, Gérôme's

central figure, a dignitary whose dress includes a sabre strapped across his waist, communicates

a more threatening message to the European viewer than the kneeling soldier in Weeks' painting,

the very image of pious manhood, who has laid down his arms.

It is possible that Interior of a Mosque at Cordova acknowledges Gérôme's Cairo

paintings in other, more oblique, ways. Weeks may have used the figure of the kneeling soldier

to reference the Cairene worshippers in Public Prayer in the Mosque of Amr. The soldier's

helmet and especially his physiognomy bear a conspicuous resemblance to "Mameluke in Full

Armour," an illustration by Wilhelm Gentz that appears in egyptologist and novelist Georg Eber's

Egypt: Descriptive, Historical and Picturesque (1884).52 To stretch this speculative connection

further—perhaps past the breaking point—the architectural history of the two subject mosques

are closely linked. The Great Mosque of Cordoba is considered the culmination of the hypostyle

system illustrated in the earlier Amr Mosque of Cairo. The Cordoba mosque operates

symbolically as a cultural and religious relic of a lost Islamic land; and, due to its geopolitical

position, as a monument to the forging of a nation from two religiously and ideologically

52. If this were the case, unless there were an earlier edition it would argue for placing a later date on the
painting than that of 1880.

106
opposed worlds.53 Considering Weeks' motivations and intentions, perhaps he considered these

meanings as he sought to perfect the tradition of Gérôme and to merge the teachings of Gérôme

and Bonnat in his own, contemporary vision of the Orient.

Nowhere is Weeks' personal vision of the "East" more evident than in his 1885 Salon

submission, Le dernier voyage;—souvenir du Gange (The Last Voyage;—souvenir of the

Ganges, approximately 76 x 114 inches, Figure 3-14). This work is described in the Salon

catalog as:

Deux Fakirs hindous se rendaient en pèlerinage à la ville sainte de Benares;

l'un d'eux etant sur le point de mourir, son camarades s'empressa de lui faire
traverser le fleuve saint pour qu'il puisse rendre le dernier soupir sur la rive
sacrée.54

Here again Weinberg found indelible echoes of Gérôme, noting that this enormous painting

"reiterates both the morbid content and the careful arrangement" of Gérôme's The Prisoner (Le

Prisonnier, 1863, Figure 3-15) and that of The Burial of a Mummy (Les Funérailles d'une

momie, c. 1877, Figure 3-16) by Gérôme's American student, Frederick Arthur Bridgman.55

Citing Weinberg, art historian Annette Blaugrund also asserted that Weeks modeled the

composition of The Last Voyage on these previous works by Gérôme and Bridgman.56 As The

53. Nuha N.N. Khoury, "The Meaning of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in the Tenth Century," Muqarnas
13 (1996): 80–98; Richard F. Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,
vol. I (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts; 2nd ed., 1857), 93; Théophile Gautier,
Wanderings in Spain (London: Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1853), 253–54.
54. Fink, 403. Weeks was awarded an Honorable Mention on the strength of this work.
55. Weinberg, American Pupils, 53–54: "As Weeks described the episode in the Salon catalogue: 'Two
Hindu Fakirs are making their pilgrimage to the holy city of Benares. As one of them is on the verge of
death, his comrade rushes him across the hallowed river so that he can draw his last breath on the sacred
shore' [my translation]."
56. Blaugrund, 223. The painting was exhibited at the 1888 International Art Exhibition in Munich, the

107
Last Voyage is one of Weeks' most important paintings, it is worth examining Weinberg's

comments in depth.

The grim-faced captive in Gérôme's The Prisoner, bound in hand stocks and rope,

mockingly serenaded as he lies immobile athwart the bottom of a dinghy, was a highlight of the

1863 Salon. Gérôme concocted this image from his own experiences of a delightful 1855

excursion up the Nile in the company of twenty-one-year old Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a trip

sponsored by the French government with the vague goal of recording Egyptian antiquities.

Gérôme's subsequent recollections were aided by photographs made on the trip by Bartholdi and

possibly others taken of Palestine by Felix Bonfils. The painting's distorted vision of the Orient

as perverse entertainment, authenticated by convincing detail, persuaded both "connoiseurs and

fools" to subscribe to Gérôme's fantasy.57

The Prisoner was highly influential, especially among some of Jean Léon Gérôme's

American students who sought to emulate the convincing artificiality of Gérôme's vision of the

East. With its soft light and historic setting, The Burial of a Mummy by Gérôme's American

pupil, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, so captured the authenticating spirit of The Prisoner and

Gérôme's Excursion of the Harem (1869, 3-17) that Le Figaro art critic Albert Wolff stated: "Les

1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 1894 Exposition in Antwerp and the Universal
Exposition, Paris 1889 (gold medal). In 1905 it was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by
Weeks' widow.
57. Dominique de Font-Réaulx, "Gérôme and Photography: Accurate Depictions of an Imagined World,"
in Laurence des Cars, Dominique de Font-Réaulx and Édouard Papet, ed., The Spectacular Art of Jean-
Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) (Milan: Skira Editore; Los Angeles: Getty Museum; Paris: Musée d'Orsay,
2010), 213–57, at 230. Page 230, note 4 quotes Jean Léon Gérôme, Notes autobiographieques [1874], ed.
G. Ackerman (Vesoul: S.A.L.S.A., 1981), 11.

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Funérailles d'une momie, by M. Bridgman, is able to be signed by the master."58 Bridgman's

style and Orientalist subject matter were so closely identified with Gérôme that German art critic

and historian Richard Muther stated flatly: "Frederick A. Bridgman is Gérôme translated into

American."59 Former Gérôme student Earl Shinn wrote in The Art Amateur that with The Burial

of a Mummy Bridgman had surpassed his teacher:

In the "Burial of a Mummy" our compatriot completely distances Gérôme by

placing behind his carefully calculated scheme of figures a landscape of almost
divine purity and beauty, completely impossible to the older artist [Gérôme].60

Gérôme had a similar stimulating effect on one of his earliest American students, Thomas

Eakins, who had studied in Gérôme's atelier with Shinn beginning in 1866. After returning to

Philadelphia in 1870, Eakins may have worked from a photograph of The Prisoner to construct

the pose for John Biglin in a Single Scull (ca. 1873, 3-18). Letters demonstrate that Eakins

sought Gérôme's advice on the rower's positioning and body mechanics. Twice Eakins sent to

Gérôme watercolors of the composition for his critique and approval.61 For Eakins and

58. Fort, 143, quoting Albert Wolff, "Le Salon de 1877," Figaro, 4 May 1877, 1 col. 3. Fort rightly adds
that this painting was strongly influenced by the work of Laurence Alma Tadema.
59. Muther, 295. Bridgman's devotion to Gérôme was widely recognized: "Mr. Bridgman belongs to a
group which has sat at the feet of Gérôme and worshipped in the mosques of the Orient." Ishmael,
"American Artists on the Seine," 100. The same article remarked of Weeks: "But is was Bonnat taught
him how to see and translate the brilliant scenes he conveys to his canvas," at 100.
60. Fort, 145, quoting Earl Shinn [pseudonym Edward Strahan], "Frederick A. Bridgman," Art Amateur
4, no. 4 (March 1881): 71. Bridgman and Gérôme were frequently compared, for example in "American
Painters Winslow Homer and F. A. Bridgman," Art Journal, n.s. (1878): 227–29 and Edward Strahan,
"Frederick A. Bridgman," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 63 (Oct. 1881): 694–705. M. G. Van
Rensselaer observed of Bridgman's paintings: "one or two might have passed anywhere for Gérôme's,"
"Frederic Arthur Bridgman," American Art and American Art Collections, ed. Walter Montgomery, vol. 1
(Boston: E. W. Walker and Co., 1889), 179–91, at 184.
61. Font-Réaulx, 230. Gerard Ackerman states that in 1873 Eakins sent to Gérôme a watercolor of a
rower in a scull and in response received a highly detailed critique, which prompted Eakins to revise and
resend to Gérôme for approval. Ackerman, 169. Weinberg relies on Ackerman's analysis and further

109
Bridgman, Gérôme was the one man who knew how to get the details right; without question

they sought his guidance and in many respects followed his example. However, there are no

known letters or textual references that professionally tie Edwin Weeks to Gérôme in like

fashion.62

Regarding Bridgman and Weeks, contemporary accounts indicate the men were good

friends. They lived in the same artsy Parisian neighborhood; Weeks was a regular tennis partner;

Bridgman served as a pall bearer at Weeks' funeral. It is probable that they critiqued each other's

efforts, and in this sense Weeks may have benefited vicariously from Gérôme's more direct and

consistent instruction to Bridgman. A number of Weeks' paintings overlap those of Bridgman in

subject, style and mood, particularly those from the 1880s and earlier such as Girl in a Moorish

Courtyard (1880).

But to evaluate Weinberg's assertion that Gérôme's influence dominated Weeks' style,

partly based on her observation that The Last Voyage—Souvenir of the Ganges "reiterates both

the morbid content and the careful arrangement of Gérôme's The Prisoner and Bridgman's The

Burial of a Mummy," requires not only a comparative visual and thematic analysis but also

consideration of other possible sources as additions or alternatives to Gérôme and his student

notes that "An even more persuasive case could be made for a relationship between one of Eakin's more
ambitious sculling pictures, The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake (1873; fig. 2), for example, and The
Prisoner or Excursion of the Harem (1869; fig. 28), which Gérôme painted and showed in the Salon
during the last year of Eakin's study in Paris." Weinberg, American Pupils, 41.
62. One rare association of Weeks and Gérôme appears in "Famous Paintings Owned on the West Coast,
XIV," Overland Monthly, n.s. 23, no. 134 (Feb. 1894): 174–75. The writer notes that Weeks' Street in
Cairo "shows him an apt pupil of his master, Gérôme." The writer does not seem to have specialist
knowledge.

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Bridgman.63 For example, Weeks' interest in rowboats and oarsmen may be traced to his early

years in Boston based on two sketches in the Archives of American Art, probably executed when

Weeks was a teenager. The small boat safely hauled ashore in Figure 3-19 demonstrates that

Weeks was intimately familiar with the type of rough but sturdy Indian craft depicted in The Last

Voyage. Another sketch from the same file (Figure 3-20) likely depicts a scene from Weeks'

boyhood, a hotly contested sculling race on the Charles River. Rowing was an immensely

popular sport in Boston; by the 1860s there was an intense rivalry between the Harvard and

Oxford university rowing clubs. The figures in the sketch are stiff and somewhat awkward, but

placement, posture and musculature are carefully observed. The kneeling figure who steadies the

shell and especially the rower in the single scull on the right relate directly to the figures in The

Last Voyage. Undoubtedly Weeks had long possessed a fundamental understanding of the body

mechanics involved in rowing.

Beyond careful attention to detail and the visual commonalities of a near-field view of a

small boat being rowed across a river, the most obvious link among works of such ostensibly

different themes—manly prowess in Eakins' John Biglin in a Single Skull, historical melodrama

in Bridgman's The Burial of a Mummy on the Nile and the sensual and the cruel in Gérôme's The

Prisoner—is an uncanny sense of physical immediacy. In none of these paintings is the viewer

left to stand on the muddy bank, craning to get a glimpse of the action. He floats on the river

along with the prisoner and his guards or the mummy and his attendants, rowing for all he's

worth or laughing at the prisoner's mock serenade or listening to the shrieks and wails of the

63. Weinberg, American Pupils, 51.

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pharaoh's mourners. Because proximity to the action has converted the viewer from an observer

to a participant, the episode, the characters and the storyline become all the more absorbing.

Among Gérôme's French predecessors, perhaps no artist had mastered this kind of visual

immersion more than Théodore Géricault with the enthralling, repulsive The Raft of the Medusa

(1818–19).

Some twenty-two years after The Prisoner made its debut and about seven years after The

Burial of a Mummy was completed, Weeks painted The Last Voyage. In the mid-1880s the

ability to create for the Victorian viewer that combined sense of immediacy, direct presence and

mortal peril was still much admired. Even in America, it was the fundamental attraction that

underlay immensely popular works such as Winslow Homer's The Life Line (1884) and The Fog

Warning (1885). To achieve it Weeks spent hour after hour, in stifling heat, in the cabin of a

small boat on the Ganges.

Viewers' interest in participatory immediacy was spurred by technical advances in

photography, which throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century continued to disrupt the

individual and collective visual systems. By the 1880s, amateur and professional photographers

in India had flooded the market with inexpensive photographic prints that made their way into

massed-produced souvenir albums and stereoscopic collections. In addition, photographic firms

that specialized in India, such as Baker & Burke and Bourne & Shepherd, published catalogues

and advertised in newspapers the hundreds of images that could be ordered by mail (available

often in large format, 15x12 and 10x12 inches).64 Weeks was an avid photographer, who traveled

64. Omar Khan, From Kashmir to Kabul, The Photographs of John Burke and William Baker 1860–1900
(Munich, Berlin, London: Prestel Verlag; Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2002); Vidya Dehejia, India

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with photographic equipment and who mentions more than once his preoccupation with the

tedious tasks of developing images (although none of his photographs is known). For these

reasons, photography must be considered among the most likely sources for the realization of

Weeks' Indian scenes.

As a potential source or aid for the production of The Last Voyage, Weeks would have

had his own photographs, possibly supplemented by any number of images readily available

from commercial photographers such as the photographic print of Manikarnika Ghat shown in

Figure 3-21.65 The Last Voyage and this contemporary photograph share almost precisely the

same vantage point.66 Minor architectural discrepancies may be explained by reference to a

photograph of the same site taken in the 1860s by commercial photographer Samuel Bourne

(Figure 3-22). Compare, for example, the chhatri or domed pavilion arising from the steps in the

Through the Lens: Photography 1840–1911 (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2006).
65. The British Library describes this image, which so precisely captures the sense of Weeks' painting:
"Photograph of Manikarnika Ghat on the River Ganges, Varanasi from the 'Earl of Jersey Collection' was
taken by an unknown photographer in the 1880s. This is the main cremation ghat of Varanasi, presided
over by the Doms, a caste who historically and till now hold exclusive rights over the cremation ghats. In
the middle of the Ghat is the Manikarnika kund (tank) which was said to have been dug by Vishnu with
his discus and filled with his perspiration from the exertion of creating the world. There are footprints of
Vishnu set in a circular marble slab on the ghats. According to legend, Shiva's mani (crest jewel) and his
consort Parvati's Karnika (earring) fell into the kund while bathing thus came the name of the ghat. This
site is known as a tirtha or ‘crossing place’ where devotees can gain access to the divine and where gods
and goddesses can come down to earth. Those who die at Varanasi are considered extremely fortunate and
blessed for they attain release from samsara, the unceasing cycle of death and rebirth, and are assured of
moksha or enlightenment." "Manikarnika Ghat, Benares," British Library Online Gallery, http:/
/www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/photocoll/m/019pho0000807s2u00004000.html, accessed 12
May 2012.
66. From a methodological standpoint, the use of photographs to assist with architectural details and
settings aligns Weeks with Gérȏme, who frequently employed photographs to enhance or supplement his
recollections and on-the-spot sketches.

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upper left of the painting with its corresponding element in the two photographs. In the 1880s

(when Weeks first went to India) it was enclosed, but in The Last Voyage Weeks restored it to its

fully open state, as it is shown in the Samuel Bourne photograph of 1865. This strongly suggests

that Weeks consulted photographs or drawings from an earlier era.

The painting, however, accomplishes what photographs of the period could never do. It

shimmers with color and vibrancy of atmosphere. The architecture, hence the broader culture of

India, is as much the subject as the figures. This is what struck the reviewer for The Art

Amateur:

On the opposite bank, filling up the whole canvas, we see the terraces and
loggias and brilliant pagodas of the temple of Benares. The scene represented
is immense and full of incident, but the picture does not on that account exceed
reasonable proportions. It is a remarkable presentation of the Oriental world with
its dazzling luminousness and brilliant color.67

At nearly six and a half feet by nine and a half, The Last Voyage covered more than double the

canvas of Bridgman's The Funeral of a Mummy (slightly more than 3 1/2 by 7 1/2 feet); it

dwarfed Gérôme's The Prisoner (about 18 by 31 inches). Even now, stacked in the storage vaults

of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, its has a striking effect. The viewer is pulled into the

painting, especially when standing slightly to the left of center. The boat (the oblique

measurement a full six feet) that ferries the dying man and the central figures appear but a few

yards off. The entire work is very broadly painted, if carefully controlled, in depths ranging from

a fairly thick impasto accentuating the boat, trees and some architectural elements to almost bare

67. T. C., "The Paris Salon," Art Amateur 13, no. 2 (July 1885): 23–24 at 24. "T. C." is likely the
Englishman Theodore Child, art critic and contributor to numerous arts publications who died in Persia on
an overland trip with Weeks.

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canvas in other areas. This variability is much more in keeping with the tenets of Bonnat, who

typically applied paint with a full brush, than the uniformly smooth finishes preferred by

Gérôme.

Close inspection reveals a wealth of incidental detail that adds interest, even for a modern

audience. Some of these details are somewhat lugubrious (scavenger birds picking at floating

bodies, a burning corpse atop the pyre) but because they are so minor and indistinct they never

sensationalize or overwhelm the subject. Subordination of the details to the overall effect was a

tenet of Bonnat's teaching, as was an emphasis on building a unified picture from planes of light

and color. The Last Voyage demonstrates this attention to the interplay of light and shadow, and

to the intersection of multiple planes, to create convincing three-dimensionality. As art historian

Alisa Luxenberg noted of Bonnat, "This kind of naturalist painting attempts to recreate a visual

experience through strong appeals to the viewer's senses, quite the opposite of Gérôme's passive

views constructed through literal translations of objective fact."68

The colors of The Last Voyage are certainly at the extremes of Gérôme's more limited

palette. Weeks applied layers of unmixed azure, muted teal, ochre, apricot and faded lilac,

roughed in gray and umber, with varying degrees of concern for precise rendering. For the

water, the juxtaposition of hues with similar values suggests Weeks' familiarity with the

technique of "equal luminescence" to create a shimmering effect of movement, pioneered by

Claude Monet in the 1870s and modified by various Impressionist artists.69 This subtle

68. Luxenberg, 233, 235.

69. Margaret Livingstone, Vision and Art: the biology of seeing (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
2002), 37–40.

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manipulation of color conveys the brilliance of intense midday sunlight on water and dusty,

weathered stone.

Concerning subject and mood, although The Last Voyage superficially shares the "morbid

content" of The Prisoner and The Funeral of a Mummy, it conveys neither the subtle mockery of

the former nor the visual operatics of the latter. It is an image of a common sacred ritual for the

dead in the context of contemporary Indian culture as Weeks experienced it. The figures and the

viewer occupy a shared space, "with air to breathe and move in" like the figures of Bonnat. They

appear solemn and dignified, not lethargic, histrionic or sinister. This is not the new European

urban reality of dance halls and smokestacks, but neither is it "the artificial combinations of

models and antique accessories to which he gives fanciful titles," as critic Theodore Child wrote

of Gérôme in his review of the Salon of 1884.70

Robert Barrie, the wealthy scion of an American publisher who had traveled in India and

later made the acquaintance of Weeks while in Paris, compared Weeks' interpretation of the

burning ghats to what he had personally seen in Benares:

They placed the long, naked body on a pile of wood, much too short for it,
however, so they doubled up the legs and worked them down among the sticks . . .
we saw some coolies bring down a body, covered with flowers, on a light bier to
the edge of the bank, where priests took it and placed it in the sacred river so that
it lay in the water with only the uncovered face above the surface. One of the
priests gathered water in his cupped hands and poured it into the open mouth of
the corpse. In former times the custom was to allow the body to float off down
the river, but the authorities had stopped this. Some years later, in Edwin Lord
Weeks's studio in the Avenue de Wagram in Paris, his Souvenir of the Ganges,
which I think the truest painter's record of the burning-ghats I have ever seen, and

70. Weeks' figures recall Edwin Blashfield's description of those of Bonnat: "His pictured people were
round and stood out, they had air to breathe and move in, you could walk around them." Blashfield, 50.
Theodore Child, "The Paris Salon," Decorator and Furnisher (June 1884): 87–89 at 87.

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 which I had etched and reproduced in colors, reminded me of this morning. In
talking over the custom of burning the bodies, Weeks, who had had ample
opportunity to see what went on while he was making his sketches, remarked that
the most revolting thing about it all was the way in which the bodies moved under
the influence of the heat when it first struck them in force. I had not noticed this
as we had not stayed long enough to see the effect on the newly arrived body.71

Weeks had little need to turn to Gérôme for inspiration. The scene of Le dernier voyage;—

souvenir du Gange, a meditation on death, religious difference, time and myth, was right in front

of him.

An American Point of View

Though to many modern art historians Weeks' style demonstrated in The Last Voyage

may seem nearly indistinguishable from that of nineteenth-century French Orientalist painters,

this opinion was not shared by art critics of the 1880s even though they were keenly sensitive to

a perceived domination of American students by their French teachers. As the century wore on

American critics developed a general reluctance to praise American artists or to promote an art

that overwhelmed and eroded a growing national desire to assert an independent American

identity. This posed a universal dilemma for American artists in Paris, who had to balance the

need to obtain the highest level of professional training, access to international shows,

exhibitions and dealers, and the cosmopolitan allure of Paris against their reputations at home.

French critics commonly dubbed American students as "true sons" of their French

masters. While in many circles this would have been interpreted as a compliment, it was not so

for more wary commentators on American culture. Expatriate Henry James' well-known quip

71. Barrie, 52–53.

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touches on this sensitivity: "It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when to-

day we look for 'American art' we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at

least find a great deal of Paris in it."72

The Last Voyage established E. L. Weeks as an exception to the view that American art

students in Paris were so immersed in French culture that they became incapable of independent

expression. A common observation of American artists was that whatever "Americanness" they

may have possessed was smothered by the imperatives of the French atelier system, the

competitive demands of the salons and the seductive charms of Parisian life. Writing on this

topic English arts journalist Robert Sherard decried the striking “transformative powers of

exteriorities over inherited and national characteristics”:

A long residence in France, the training in the French ateliers, the study of French
models, the teaching of French masters, the contemplation of French
masterpieces, and the effective and constant influence of French inspirations,
combine to cast in a mould entirely French the American art-student.73

According to Sherard, most American artists lacked originality of conception or

execution. The superficial outward bravado of American independence and originality folded

under a lack of artistic confidence. American art students in Paris became merely the “docile

imitators of one or the other of the French masters.” How did this happen to a country with a

72. Fink, 282 quoting Henry James from The Painter’s Eye. Essays Selected by John L. Sweeney
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 216 (James' remarks first published in Harper’s
Magazine, October 1887). Expressing a similar sentiment in 1900 the American Department of Fine Arts
of the Paris Exposition launched a concerted campaign to confirm “a new position for the United States as
an art-producing nation” free of “foreign trammels.” Diane P. Fischer, ed., Paris 1900: the “American
School” at the Universal Exposition (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2000),
26.
73. Robert Sherard, “American Artists in Paris,” Magazine of Art (January 1895): 224–29 at 226.
Sherard (1861–1943), friend and first biographer of Oscar Wilde, was a long time resident of Paris.

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distinct literature and a talent for commerce and industry bordering on “a grandeur which is

almost artistic”?

It is regrettable; for America, with her magnificent landscapes, her boundless

horizons, her lakes, her mountains, her forests, her bright and vivid colours under
the purest of skies, might produce a school of artists superior to any possible to
the Old World . . .

Yet some American artists could indulge in the gravitational pull of the world’s center of

art without becoming overpowered by it. They were few in number, but their works shared a

common theme of pushing against established limits. For Sherard this distinctive individual

vision defined them as American artists. He offered the examples of Sargent, “with his fondness

for striking colours and his accentuation of the leading characteristics of his subject, which in

some cases has been carried almost to the point where caricature begins" and of Whistler,

"who so spiritualizes that in the picture with its infinite subtleties the portrait is almost

overlooked . . .”74

Sherard included Edwin Lord Weeks among these exceptional American artists

distinguished by a highly individualized vision. He found Weeks’ creativity not so much in his

choice of subjects, but in his superb handling of light:

. . . in the grey of a Parisian studio, [Weeks] floods his charming canvases with
that bright sunlight of British India which, for the purposes of his art, he explored
in every direction. His "Fin d’une Promenade," a Jodpore [sic] scene, will be
remembered by those who were fortunate enough to see it in the Paris Salon of
1888. The warmest note of colour in this picture is the warm blue of the Indian
sky, seen athwart the glittering minarets; but there is art in this use of subdued
colours as displayed in the general effect of brilliant sunlight.75

74. Sherard, 226.

75. Sherard, 227–29.

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 Voicing a similar concern to Sherard's, in 1885 influential Scottish critic R.A.M.

Stevenson expressed dismay that the French atelier system swallowed whatever sparks of

creativity American art students may have once possessed. Professional training (or as

Stevenson suggested, imitation of imitation) for many artists was bought at the price of

individuality, a hard bargain for the students of America, who “has chosen France to be her

foster-parent in the arts.” 76

Nonetheless, Stevenson found a few noteworthy, "naturally original" Americans—Edwin

Weeks among them—who managed to escape the enforced orbital pattern:

. . . the sweeping charge so often brought against American artists is only true of a
limited number . . it does not follow in the least that it clips the wings of those
who are naturally original . . . . But the most advanced of the new school of
Americans . . . their work is not only sound and bold in treatment; it displays
besides traces of the working of the Teutonic sap, a sympathy with the eccentric, a
more fervid sentiment, and an original feeling for nature.77

Like Sherard, Stevenson also placed Weeks, "brilliant" and "novel," in the company of such

strong individualists as Whistler and Sargent:

Some of the most striking work of the year is, however, from the brush of men not
hitherto officially recognised; and conspicuous among this is 'Le Dernier Voyage'
of Mr. E. L. Weeks. This is a work which would stand out in any gallery by the
forcible originality of its conception. 78

Although Stevenson found fault with Weeks' figural drawing, he pointed out that Weeks "does

not aim at the Academic" but rather he adjusts his technique to suit the purpose before him, that

of creating a forcible presentation of his subject:

76. R.A.M. Stevenson, “The American Salon,” Magazine of Art 8 (Jan 1885): 512–19, 512.
77. Stevenson, 513.
78. Stevenson, 518, 516.

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 In its wide range and greed of colour, its strong and somewhat riotous effect and
novelty, the painting of Mr. Weeks contrasts with the refined choice of harmony
and slavery to key which distinguishes the work of the school descended from
Corot.79

Ironically, it was British arts writers Robert Sherard and R.A.M. Stevenson who identified what

was most American about the paintings of Edwin Lord Weeks and what distinguished him from

his compatriots in Paris. Indirectly they pinpointed the more elusive link between Weeks and his

teacher Léon Bonnat, that common dedication to the pursuit of individual artistic vision rather

than replication of an academic formula. Writers lauded those American artists, among them

Edwin Weeks, who were able to take advantage of French training but not succumb to the

strictures of the Academy or to foreign styles:

In portraiture, still-life, genre, and especially in landscape and pictures directly

under the influence of landscape feeling, we see enough boldness and enough
sincere personal observation of nature to refute the often expressed fear of an
'atelier' system of education and to relieve the most timid student of fears for his
precious individuality. Bonnat, for example, has certainly not inspired that
striking and audacious piece of imagination and vigorous personal handling, 'Le
Dernier Voyage,' of E. L. Weeks, though he doubtless inculcated that habit of
observation by masses and that attention to delicate values which have enabled
the young American to realize his strange Oriental dream in such a bold and
original manner.80

Whether the subtleties of "individuality" or "Americanness" manifest in a given painting

is a matter of opinion, but nonetheless vital for a contextual understanding of the artist. This

79. Stevenson, 518.

80. "The Salon," Saturday Review, 59 (20 June 1885): 824–25, at 824. A similar concern was expressed
in The Art Amateur of December 1882: "For example, would not Mr. Bridgman have been a better artist
than he is if he had taken Gérȏme's precepts to heart and attempted to apply them independently, instead
of essaying to paint themes as nearly identical as possible with those of Gérȏme and in Gérȏme's
manner?", Sigma, "Pennsylvania Academy Exhibition," Art Amateur (December 1882): 8–11, at 8.

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issue is relevant when evaluating Weinberg's final comparison between Weeks' The Great Mogul

and His Court Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India (c. 1886; 33 5/8 x 54 1/2 inches,

Figure 3-23) and Gérôme's Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert (1857; 25 1/4 x 43 1/4 inches,

Figure 3-24). First, her observation that both paintings are "uncannily photographic" in their

precision is certainly valid.81 In the era before widely available color photographs, the pursuit of

near-photographic representation was common to many artists. Gérôme was known for his

representational precision as well as for an absolute, glassy finish, not unlike that of an actual

photograph. Weeks was less concerned with tactile distractions. Although he sought a high

degree of representational precision, Weeks' looser facture and selective applications of thick

paint resulted in a very different viewer experience, one modulated by surface texture. The

extent of his manipulations of the canvas topography to create emphasis can be seen in a

photograph of The Great Mogul and His Court Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India,

taken under raking light (Figure 3-25).

Despite some stylistic similarities, the paintings differ in tone, subject and intent. In

Egyptian Recruits, dozens if not hundreds of men trudge across a barren landscape of seemingly

endless sand and cloudless sky, bound in twos by handstocks. With this and other paintings of

the 1850s, Gérôme established a reputation for visual truth and scientific exactitude in the

81. The Great Mogul and His Court Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India, now at the
Portland Museum of Art in Maine, is a variation on Weeks' 1886 Paris Salon submission, Retour de
cortége impérial de la grande mosque à Delhi, sous la règne de l'Empereur Shab Jehan;—XVIIe siècle.
"E. L. Weeks sends a picture, of about the same dimensions as that of Mr. Pearce, representing 'The
Mogul Emperor Returning from Prayer at the Great Mosque of Delhi, Seventeenth Century.' This subject
has been treated on a smaller scale, and with a quite different arrangement in a picture by Mr. Weeks,
recently sold in New York." Child was referring to Charles Sprague Pearce's twelve by eight foot canvas.
Theodore Child, "American Pictures at 'The Salon,' " Art Amateur (May 1886): 123–26, at 124.

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rendering of racial "types."82 A bleak comment on the brutality of contemporary Egyptian life,

the mood alternates between a grim pessimism and admiration for the perseverance of the

"recruits," conscripts for the Egyptian army or forced labor camps. Théophile Gautier observed

that Gérôme avoided the usual pathos associated with such scenes in favor of emphasizing the

figures' stoic resignation.83

By contrast, the richly imagined The Great Mogul and His Court celebrates the

pageantry, splendor and political power of the mid-seventeenth century Mughal emperor Shah

Jahan, depicted departing the southern gate of the Jama Masjid in Delhi, near the immense

fortified palace known as the Red Fort.84 Shah Jahan reigned in the prosperous "golden age of

the Mughals." This was also the golden age of early modern Indian architecture; Shah Jahan

actively oversaw an unparalleled construction program which included the Red Fort complex

depicted as well as several other splendid monuments, including the incomparable Taj Mahal.

Weeks treats the architecture with his usual precision. Closely observed details of the procession

such as the cavalrymen's helmets (khula khud), chest armor (chahar-aina, the "four mirrors")

bordered in scrolling gold motifs with leather straps, and mail shirts (zirah) testify to Weeks'

careful study of early modern examples. In this respect Weeks subscribed to the practices of

82. Peter Benson Miller, "Gérôme and Ethnographic Realism at the Salon of 1857," in Reconsidering
Gérôme, ed. Scott Allan and Mary Morton (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010): 106–118, at
113–15.
83. Ackerman, 46–47.
84. It is estimated that approximately 57,000 people lived within the walls of the Red Fort, all there to
serve the needs of the emperor. Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, The New Cambridge
History of India Part I, 4 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 200.

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artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Laurence Alma-Tadama, who lavished attention on

artifacts and materials in order to convey historic and archaeological exactitude. But more

importantly (setting aside possible layered allusions to the British as the "White Mughals")

Weeks' painting invests Indian society and civilization with a prestige, vitality and political

agency that has no parallel in Gérôme's North African scenes.

Weinberg makes a final point regarding the comparison of Weeks and Gérôme. She notes

that "Weeks's working methods emulated Gérôme's as well," citing in support a short article on

Weeks in the April 1893 number of the Art Interchange:

. . . he conscientiously filled his portfolio with sketches and studies, and his head
with impressions and souvenirs, while forbearing to paint 'pictures.' When he
returns to his European studio he is enabled to put all these impressions and
studies together and produce elaborate compositions that apparently have been
painted from nature and art in the blazing sunshine of Jetnan or Delhi . . . . At
present Mr. Weeks occupies a handsome studio in Paris, crowded with the
trophies of his travels, by the aid of which and the atmosphere which fills such an
interior, he is enabled to conjure up again, on the banks of the Seine the life of the
Ganges and the Jordan.85

The convenient practice of housing props and costumes in the studio was widely practiced

among visual arts professionals, from fine artists to cartoonists. For those intent on marketing

paintings to an upscale clientele, a lavish work space and reception area filled with exotica

served as atmosphere and advertising for the studio that often doubled as a gallery. Weeks

shared this common practice with Gérôme and many successful painters of the Orient.

85. "Edwin Lord Weeks," Art Interchange, 94, 96; Weinberg, American Pupils, 54–55.

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 Aside from a generalized setting of the Orient (Egypt and India) and the inclusion of

many figures, further comparison of Weeks' The Great Mogul and His Court Returning from the

Great Mosque at Delhi, India and Gérôme's Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert, suggests

little in content, composition or attitude to link securely Weeks and Gérôme, or for that matter

Weeks and Bonnat. The Art Interchange reached this conclusion in the same 1893 article about

Weeks quoted above:

As an Orientalist he may be said to stand about half way between Fromentin and
Verestchagen. The charm of the immemorial east is upon him and yet he cannot
shut his eyes to her absurdities—he paints very frankly the inelegant cut of an
Indian gentleman's back hair, and of his white linen pantaloons. He will not
deliberately embellish and smooth away like Fromentin and Huguet; he has much
more sentiment and right feeling than the much-advertised Russian traveling
painter; and he has not quite that admirable science of the artist which makes him
to render his facts faithfully, and yet make them truly artistic and satisfactory—
e.g., Gérôme, who is not generally esteemed a good painter, and Guillaumet, who
is.86

Despite his long acknowledgment of Bonnat as his teacher and the over-arching influence

of Gérôme, as the above excerpt demonstrates, nineteenth-century writers on the visual arts were

invariably hesitant to locate Edwin Lord Weeks comfortably within the penumbra of either

master. In fact, they were hesitant to tether Weeks to any other Orientalist painter.

Contemporary critics saw in Weeks an amalgam of influences threaded together by an intrinsic

American individuality. From the outset, as S.G.W. Benjamin observed in 1879, Edwin Lord

Weeks' paintings revealed that he was very much his own man:

86. Though admiring of Weeks' "great cleverness and technical ability," the writer was not impressed with
Weeks' ability to draw nor with the originality of his compositions, save that of The Last Voyage. Yet he
found Weeks' evocations of India to be " . . . in a mood that apparently hesitates between the frankly and
brutally realistic and the judiciously poetical." "Edwin Lord Weeks," Art Interchange, 94.

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 They are marked by a powerful individuality, which delights in glowing effects of
light, and revels in the brilliant coloring of tropical scenery of the varied splendor
of Oriental architecture and costumes. There is something Byronic in the fervor
of this artist's enthusiasm for the East, and the easy adaptability that has enabled a
son of New England to identify himself with the life and scenery of lands so
exactly the opposite of his own. Although a pupil of Bonnât, and an ardent
admirer of the excessive realism now affected by some of the followers of the
later French school, Mr. Weeks is, in spite of himself, an idealist, and no imitator
of any style.87

87. Benjamin, Art in America, 196. Benjamin was a friend of Weeks from their Boston days. Despite his
usual praise, in this same work Benjamin faulted Weeks for "finding difficulty in mastering the technical
or mechanical problems," "a lack of knowledge or feeling for form," "a weakness in drawing," and
"sometimes an apparent opaqueness in his pigments." However he concluded by granting Weeks "the fire
of genius."

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 Chapter Four

Edwin Lord Weeks in North Africa

Although Edwin Lord Weeks is best known for his proto-cinematic paintings of British

India, works that fully reflect his mature style, his professional stature had been well-established

long before he journeyed to the sub-continent. For roughly the first third of his career, from the

mid-1870s until after he made his initial trip to India in 1882, Weeks' subject focus was almost

exclusively the people, architecture and landscape of North Africa. This period launched his

international reputation as an "artist-explorer" who was determined to venture well beyond the

comfortable, protected confines of Cairo and Tangier that had satisfied many of his European and

American contemporaries.

North Africa was Edwin Lord Weeks' proving ground, as a man and an artist. Audiences

deemed his Moroccan camel caravans, dusty and crowded midday market scenes, and looming

desert monuments especially credible because they were invested with the artist's personal

experience. The press consistently presented this experience as hard-won, forged by unusual

daring combined with the physical stamina and courage to pursue the artist's vision at the risk of

his own life. Much of this is true.

The novel persona of the artist-adventurer coupled with Weeks' more romantic

interpretations of North Africa is a combination that intrigued the public, impressed critics and

distinguished Weeks in a thematic sense from many of his Orientalist colleagues. Surprisingly,

Weeks' North African paintings were rarely compared to those of his contemporaries, or for that

matter to works by his teacher Léon Bonnat or to those of the most famous Orientalist,

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Jean-Léon Gérȏme. He prompted other stylistic, intellectual and international associations.

Early reviewers were more likely to reach back a generation for comparisons to the North

African grandeur evoked by French painter and arts theorist Eugène Fromentin (1820–76) or to

the expressive brushwork, light and color drenched Moroccan scenes of the influential Catalan

artist Mariano Fortuny (1838–74). But even when critics had a ready comparison, they often

agreed that Weeks' North African paintings were highly original, individualistic, even notably

American.

Today scholars tend to aggregate nineteenth-century artists' versions of the East.

Individual motivation and intent as well as contemporaneous responses generally have been

ignored or subsumed in the modern academic discourse of the West's domination of the East.

Orientalist scenes by Weeks and others are most often discussed in terms of imperialism, sexism,

overt and latent violence, overlaid with inscriptions of cultural degeneracy, lassitude and decay.

But to evaluate more fully an artist like Edwin Lord Weeks, whose work stands at the

intersection of multiple cultures, requires a more nuanced approach that considers the critical

reception of the artist and his work in its social and political context. In no case is this more

evident than with the charged political environment that enveloped American Edwin Weeks

when he first journeyed to the East, not long after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, just as

the European powers' scramble for control of the African continent was heating up in earnest.

Brief Overview: European Interests in North Africa

Before discussing the travel dates and selected paintings related to what might be termed

Weeks' North African period (mid-1870s–early 1880s), it will be helpful to consider in a dozen

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or so pages the common geopolitical awareness that a mindful educated viewer of the time

would have brought to an exhibition of his paintings (Figure 4-1). Not unlike today, politics and

religion often undergirded a Victorian's intellectual command and emotional response to issues

concerning the region. A profound interest in visualizing scenes of the Bible sent waves of

American and European artists to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to explore the terrain

and cultures of the Levant and Egypt, a phenomenon that gained a new religious, scientific,

political and commercial urgency after the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin

of Species.1 Concurrently, European commercial rivalries that began in the eighteenth century

continued to drive political priorities in the Mediterranean and on the African continent. The

race to acquire African markets, natural resources, cheap labor, military outposts, soldiers,

coaling stations and that ultimate Victorian status symbol—the far-flung colony—continued to

escalate through the 1880s. Heated negotiations did little to diminish a relentless cycle of

European military incursions to gain control of coveted North African territories and to quell

armed, fiercely determined local resistance.

Against this commercial and political backdrop, with a reinvigorated passion for biblical

lands driven by Darwinian debates, American and European travel to the Holy Land and North

Africa increased dramatically in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Like many leisure

travelers, professional artists typically sojourned in cities with temperate winter climates like

1. See Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, Israel Exploration Society,
1979) and also John Davis, The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century
American Art and Culture (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996).

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Cairo, Algiers and Tangier. Despite being the sites of ongoing international political wrangling

and sporadic violence, these tourist and commercial hubs generally remained open to Europeans

and even supported flourishing expatriate communities thanks to aggressive diplomacy, military

threats, financial leverage, systemic corruption and harsh criminal penalties for violating

European persons or property.

Most Western travelers to North Africa seldom ventured beyond comfortable European

enclaves. The verandas of Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo or the Hôtel St. George in Algiers became

social magnets for monied refugees from the gray December skies of Paris or London in search

of an exotic locale with impeccable service. Once in Cairo, for example, few strayed farther than

the hour and a half carriage ride to the pyramids (for which by 1880 a macadamized road had

obviated Edwin Weeks' 1872 bumpy day trip astride a small donkey) or risked more than a

leisurely tour of the Nile by dahabiah, where they could sit in a comfortable chair to sip a "peg"

or two as they glided along.

However, European excursions into the desert interior were not always met with the same

reliable hospitality. Although in the 1870s and early 1880s Europeans had secured the vital

North African ports with superior weaponry and bombardments, the interior routes and towns of

Egypt, Tripoli, Algeria and Morocco were sites of active unrest. Egypt and Barbary were soon to

succumb to European control, but it was not without a protracted fight.

When Edwin Weeks journeyed to Egypt in the 1870s it was still under the hereditary

governance of the family of Muhammad Ali, an Albanian commander who in 1805 had seized

power in an exceptionally bloody and confusing civil war. Muhammad Ali acknowledged the

suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan and the commands of the Porte, though early in his rule he

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proclaimed himself Khedive (hereditary viceroy) and in effect ruled Egypt as an independent

entity. In the coming decades Egypt's economic policies, essentially centered on the cultivation

of cotton and associated industries and exports, led to a close alliance with European merchants

that eventually resulted in an economic dependence on Britain and France. In a grand play of

later nineteenth-century geopolitical one-upmanship, both European powers sought to dominate

Egyptian affairs to enhance their respective international and strategic advantages.

A major source of contention was the Suez Canal, begun in 1858 by a French

conglomerate with close ties to the Khedive. The British, fearing for their continued control of

access to India, ostensibly opposed the canal on the grounds of the use of forced labor, and

employed a range of diplomatic and financial pressures, including fomenting a Bedouin-led

insurrection, to obstruct its progress. In the end, pragmatism trumped diplomacy; after the Suez

Canal's opening in 1869 the British soon dominated canal shipping, carrying more than eighty

percent of tonnage by 1882.

In the meantime, eager to modernize its infrastructure and strengthen its military, Egypt

under Isma'il (1863–79) incurred vast debts as well as dependence on French military advisors

and British capital investments. Soaring debt and declining exports due to the reemergence of

the American South on the cotton market forced Isma'il Pasha, under intense pressure from

European banks, to sell Egypt's forty-five percent interest in the canal to Britain in 1875; the

balance was retained by French shareholders. In 1876 the country officially defaulted on its

loans. To protect their investments, British and French representatives were sent to Egypt to

oversee its revenues and expenditures and to "advise" various ministries. Laws were instituted to

protect Europeans in Egypt, including one that permitted European creditors to attach the

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property of small landholders, abolishing the long cultural tradition of life tenancy.2

Severe drought exacerbated the country's growing fiscal problems. The Nile's flood crest

of 1877 was six feet below average; one-third of the crop acreage could not be irrigated. Despite

widespread starvation and depressed cotton prices, in the villages of the Nile Valley tax

collectors confiscated properties of delinquent fellahin and brutalized them with public

floggings. English poet and writer Wilfred Blunt, traveling through Egypt during the famine,

wrote:

It was rare in those days to see a man in the fields with a turban on his head, or
more than a shirt on his back . . . . The principal towns on market days were full
of women selling their clothes and their silver ornaments to the Greek usurers,
because the tax collectors were in the village, whip in hand.3

The suffering and humiliation inflamed anti-European and nationalist sentiment as well as

resentment of the Turco-Circassians and Egyptian-Albanians who dominated the military

command and prestigious government posts.

In 1879 the formation of the Egyptian Nationalist Party and the subsequent 1881 coup

attempt against the Khedive Tawfiq (the more pliable son of Ismail), led by the charismatic

2. "From about 10,000 in 1848, the number of Europeans in Egypt grew nearly ten times by 1882 . .
. . the sheer numbers of immigrants might have been enough to generate a certain amount of conflict . . .
The Europeans were present everywhere the Egyptian worker, artisan, or merchant looked, whether as
competitors for work, or as owners acquiring workshops, or as creditors. Europeans demanded cash crops
like cotton, transforming the economy. But they also insisted on immunity from Egyptian law and
taxation, seeking an advantage over Egyptians in their own country that led to seething frustrations."
Juan R. I. Cole, "Of Crowds and Empires: Afro-Asian Riots and European Expansion, 1857–1882,"
Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 1 (Jan. 1989): 106–33, at 111.
3. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (New York: 1922), 8–9
quoted by Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
(London, New York: Verso, 2001): 104.

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Egyptian general Ahmed Urabi, put the British in fear of their pocketbooks and their shipping

routes. Concerned that the debt continued to be serviced and that the canal be protected, in May

of 1882 Britain and France dispatched complementary fleets of warships to Alexandria,

prompting a cascade of anti-European riots. For three days in July the British fleet bombarded

Alexandria (by this time the French had sailed), commencing with some three thousand shells on

the first day. They followed the shelling with an invasion of marines. By August, General Sir

Garnet Wolseley had converged a force of over thirty thousand troops and forty Royal Navy

warships to seize the Suez Canal, decimate the Urabi Revolt and secure Cairo, all of which was

accomplished in short order. From mid-September 1882, although formally an independent

country and Ottoman province ruled by the Khedive, in reality the British maintained possession

and control of the Egypt well into the twentieth century.4

Although they had to relinquish Egypt to the British, French colonizing efforts fared

much better on the Barbary Coast, which included Tripoli (now Libya), Tunis (Tunisia), Algeria

and Morocco. In the mid-nineteenth century Tripoli was a feuding, disorganized, minor province

of the Ottoman Empire. However, as Europeans gobbled up regions to the east and west, it

became the focus of Ottoman reform efforts and an attempt to establish a political and

commercial bulwark against aggressive European encroachment. Emphasis on land and

administrative reform, agricultural production and settlement met with varying degrees of

success, in part due to the limited arable land (in today's Libya, a little more than one percent is

4. See generally, Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the end of the twentieth century, vol. 2, The Cambridge
History of Egypt, Cambridge Histories Online, <histories.cambridge.org>.

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arable). Modernizing reforms could scarcely compete with the province's well-established and

profitable slave trade, even after its formal abolition in 1853. In 1872, the year of Edwin Weeks'

first trip to North Africa, the British Consul in Benghazi reported on the

enormous proportions which the trade in slaves has assumed. Extraordinary

prices have ruled, both in Egypt and Constantinople, and the local Government
has openly permitted and encouraged the slave dealers, and thousands of these
poor wretched creatures have been exported. It may be asked how this affects
commerce; but the answer is simple. British subjects dare not mix themselves up
in any way in this nefarious traffic; and the natives, protected by their
government, buy slaves in the interior and ship them to Alexandria, where they
quadruple their capital.5

The Ottoman Empire's willingness to invest considerable capital in building forts, digging wells

and raising mosques in a concerted effort to protect the caravan routes that supplied the

province's principal export discouraged Europeans from developing alternative commercial

interests in the area. With limited commercial prospects to be gained only at the expense of

extreme moral compromises, most Europeans concluded there simply were easier and safer

profits to be made elsewhere in North Africa.

Immediately to the west, Tunis offered improved opportunities, especially for the French.

France's decades-long occupation of neighboring Algeria spurred keen interest in Tunisian

governmental and commercial affairs. By the mid-nineteenth century Tunis was home to several

European consulates and sizable expatriate communities, whose activities centered on the influx

of European manufactured goods that increasingly overwhelmed local production.

5. Lisa Anderson, "Nineteenth-Century Reform in Ottoman Libya," International Journal of Middle

East Studies 16, no. 3 (Aug. 1984): 325–48 at 334, quoting from British Accounts and Papers (1872),
"Report on Bangazi," 1080.

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 Like Tripoli, Tunis was formally a province of the Ottoman Empire although the Bey of

Tunis (Muhmmad III as-Sadiq) governed autonomously and maintained an independent armed

force. To counteract Europe's intimidatory advances, the Bey instigated a number of reforms to

modernize the Tunisian economy, infrastructure, army and navy. But European banks' onerous

terms, balanced on the back of a tottering economy, left the government in dire financial straits.

Taxes skyrocketed, leading to mounting popular dissatisfaction, insurrection, and a desperate

bargain with European bankers. In the late 1860s crop failures, famines, and devastating typhus

and cholera epidemics further decimated the region. Bankruptcy was declared in 1869; a

Commission Financière Internationale, led by France, Italy and Britain, took over management

of the Tunisian economy.

In the coming decade France gained virtually complete control over Tunis. As one of the

outcomes of the Congress of Berlin (July 1878), convened to address Balkan nationalism and the

European balance of power thrown akilter by the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the Russo-Turkish

War (1877–78), Tunis was used as a bargaining chit to placate France. Initially somewhat

ambivalent about its colonial objectives in Tunis, a series of devious commercial maneuvers by

the British and Italians prompted French troops to invade Tunis in April 1881. Using the pretext

of driving the troublesome Tunisian Kroumer from overstepping the borders into Algeria, ten of

thousands of French soldiers crushed the indigenous resistance, paving the way for the Treaty of

Bardo (May 12, 1881) which granted France a protectorate over the province nominally

controlled by the Bey of Tunis, Muhammed as-Sadiq.

Decades earlier, the French had exhibited a similar modus operandi in next-door Algeria.

Disputatious relations dated to the Napoleonic Wars, aggravated by outrages perpetrated against

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European and American shipping and enslavement of sailors by Barbary pirates. The pirates,

actually privateers acting in concert with the rulers of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, stoked the

coffers of the Ottoman provinces and helped ensure their autonomy. Rightly offended by the

corsairs' common early-nineteenth century practice of enslaving sailors and Christians, not to

mention impeding commerce, the European powers and the young United States conducted a

series of successful naval operations against the Dey of Algiers and his fellow Ottoman

provincial rulers. When the Dey of Algiers struck the French consul with his ceremonial fly

whisk on April 29, 1827, it was all the French needed to precipitate an international incident.

General de Bourmont sailed six hundred ships to coast of Algiers, landing about 34,000 troops

just west of the Dey's stronghold. The Dey and his family hastily departed for Italy as the French

army ended centuries of local Ottoman rule.

Sparing no means, the French army surmounted fierce resistance to gain control of

northern Algeria by the late 1840s. Algeria was thence forth governed as an integral part of

France. Land was seized and sold to colons at bargain prices; French prisoners were dumped on

Algerian shores; traditional social, communal structures and land holdings were dismantled. The

French army, however, could scarcely contain seething popular resentment. In 1871 fighting

spread throughout the region, fueled by soaring wheat prices and the same drought and famine

conditions that had spread throughout the Middle East in the late 1860s. With a long list of

grievances against the army's ruthless suppression, facing starvation and unable to obtain

promised governmental loans to replenish seed supplies, an insurrection that began with the

Kabyle people quickly spread to the spahis, the French light cavalry regiments comprised of

indigenous soldiers. Retribution was swift and severe. A régime d'exception was imposed on

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insurrectionist areas that enabled Muslims to be jailed for years, without trial, for minor offenses

that seemingly threatened French authority.

Morocco, the focus of Edwin Weeks' early travels, had close cultural ties to Algeria but,

for various reasons, was able to remain relatively autonomous until the end of the nineteenth

century, primarily by politically buying off the major powers. In the 1840s a testy conflict with

France over the Algerian border and the harboring of Algerian resistance leader 'Abd al-Qādir

(who had fled Algeria to regroup in northern Morocco) led to France's bombardment of coastal

Tangier and Mogador. Morocco was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Tangiers with

which it acknowledged France's claims to Algeria. Although it bought some measure of peace

with France, the treaty deeply divided factions within Morocco, further destabilizing the region.

Always keeping a wary eye on developments near the Strait of Gibraltar and its Mediterranean

shipping interests, Britain was not about to let Continental powers gain the upper hand on the

Moroccan coast. However, Britain was able in effect to gain substantial economic control over

Morocco (and keep other European interests at bay) through an 1856 commercial treaty that

negotiated away the sultan's lucrative monopolies on exports and capped customs duties.

With Britain and France mollified, second-rate power Spain stepped up its military

threats. Spain posed an imminent menace to Moroccan independence due to its proximity just

across the Strait of Gibraltar as well as to its possession of two port cities located on the

Moroccan coast, Ceuta and Melilla. These cities, part of the Spanish empire, were under

constant assault from Moroccan raiders (the Kabylas) who easily evaded Spanish soldiers by

galloping straight for the desert. When promises and covenants failed to halt the attacks, and of

course with an eye on its economic interests and investment opportunities, as early as the late

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1850s Spain began to whip up a frenzy of rhetoric to justify invasion of Morocco. Spain

declared war on Morocco on October 22, 1859 after the Rif attacked and destroyed Spanish

fortifications and, in an unforgivable slight to the Spanish, took down and damaged the Spanish

shield. A Spanish force of thirty-six thousand (backed up by heavy artillery, naval power, and a

surge of patriotic feeling) took only a few weeks to vanquish the Moroccans in the 1860 Battle of

Tetuan. A month later Morocco recognized Spanish control of Ceuta and Melilla in perpetuity,

agreed to restrain the unruly attackers, ceded a few other territories and paid a hefty cash

indemnity to the victors—which Morocco could only pay by taking out a loan from the British.

Lacking the industrial and manufacturing base of Britain and France, Spain was slow to

follow up its military successes in Morocco with commercial ones. (The real winner was

Britain, which was enabled to strengthen its presence in the Straits, a benefit to the British

steamship line that recently had started operating between Gibraltar and Tangiers and was critical

to the strategic defense of the Suez Canal, just underway.) Despite numerous attempts to

establish commercial momentum, a series of internal economic and civil crises in Spain deterred

progress in Morocco. Again and again Spanish commercial initiatives and ambitious plans for a

Moroccan railway were thwarted by the combined machinations of the British and French, who

by 1863 had won the rights from the Moroccan government to purchase properties as well as

acquired immunities from local jurisdiction for their citizens.6 Other commercial schemes were

6. Alberto Elena and Javier Ordóñez, "Science, Technology, and the Spanish Colonial Experience in the
Nineteenth Century," Osiris, 2nd series, 15 Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise
(2000): 70–82.

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undermined by weak urban and agrarian structures in Morocco, its largely mobile population and

a countryside that was disquietingly inhospitable to Europeans. European merchants were

constantly on guard against tribal insurrection and unwilling to invest surplus capital in land and

production as they had in other North African regions.

At the mercy of European military and commercial ambitions, with mounting debts and

onerous taxes, prices of staples escalating due to export demands and the growing resentment of

the indigenous population, the sultan was forced to pour money into the army in order to

maintain order. Using European military advisors and weapons, the army was routinely

employed as an internal police force. Rural groups rallied around their shaykhs; calls for jihad

were common, directed not only against a Christian foe but a monarchy seen as steeped in

oppression, betrayal and collusion with Europeans.7 Politically disunited and economically

floundering, in the coming decades Moroccan independence waned as the faltering Spanish

colonization plans gave way to the more aggressive designs of the French.

American Interests in North Africa

Because the United States had no direct colonial interests in North Africa, as an American

Edwin Lord Weeks' interpretations of the sites and cultures of the region were accorded more

objectivity than if he had been a French or British citizen. The question arises whether Weeks'

perceived objectivity arose from the content of his paintings, or whether the appreciation of their

7. Susan G. Miller and Amal Rassam, "The View from the Court: Moroccan Reactions to European
Penetration during the Late Nineteenth Century," International Journal of African Historical Studies 16,
no. 1 (1983): 25–38.

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content was amplified by a contemporaneous understanding of American national character and

opinion.

Though Americans viewed developments in North Africa from afar, each new episode

covered in the American press roiled Yankee arguments on the morality of imperialism and the

advisability of European alliances. Distance did not prevent educated Americans from taking a

serious interest in European colonial affairs or from developing stubborn, divisive opinions on

the relative merits of the English versus the French brand of imperialism and, ultimately, whether

colonizing expeditions were really worth the trouble.

Of all regions of the world, Americans were particularly wary of North Africa, the scene

of the earliest, and some of the bitterest, international humiliations of the young nation at the

hands of the Barbary pirates, labeled "sea dogs" and "a pettifogging nest of robbers" by Thomas

Jefferson.8 For years Americans were forced to pay millions in tribute to the corsairs (in 1800,

20% of U.S. government expenditures), who sailed primarily from Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers.

The relative costs of buying a dishonorable peace or waging an uncertain war was a

determination that the isolationist Congress was unable to resolve in favor of military

mobilization. However, after the close of the War of 1812 and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent

in December of 1814, the newly-confident public clamored for retribution against the

degradations perpetrated upon American citizens and trade.

8. Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present (New
York, London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007), 32, without further citation to Jefferson.

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 After more than thirty years of indignities and the capture of thirty-five American vessels

and seven hundred sailors, in 1815 a reluctant James Madison requested from Congress and

received a formal declaration of war. He dispatched American naval hero Stephen Decatur, at

the command of the flagship U.S.S. Guerriere and ten warships, to the Barbary Coast. The

expedition was an unqualified triumph for Decatur, who obtained the unconditional release of

American captives, a $10,000 indemnity and a favorable treaty from the Dey of Algiers "dictated

at the mouths of our cannon." After next proceeding to Tunis and Tripoli to secure the release of

additional hostages as well as compensation for seized ships, Decatur and his victorious fleet

returned to the United States to resounding jubilation. These triumphant international forays

enormously elevated the young nation's military stature and recharged Americans' sense of

national identity and mission in the world.9 On the coast of North Africa, America had entered

the world stage.

Though in subsequent decades American trade in the Mediterranean dramatically

increased, the country remained divided on the moral, political and economic advisability of

colonizing expeditions. Each new North African extra-territorial foray by a European country

churned popular opinion in the United States. The central issue was plain, invariably presenting

a stark choice: to stand with a European ally and garner the reciprocal benefits, or to stand

against, and remain loyal to a legacy of anti-colonialism.

Popular American opinion was surprisingly astute. As the shaky 1878 Conference of

Berlin accords finally fell apart in April 1881 when the French marched from Algiers into

9. Oren, 21–75.

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Tunisia (to establish a French protectorate that lasted until 1956),10 the American consul in Tunis,

George Washington Fish, lamented “It looks as though the French are coming here to stay.”

Distressed by the French troops’ brazen and violent actions, he observed with dismay: “In plain

Anglo-Saxon language . . . the French are . . . using the [Tunisian] government for their own

purposes.” 11

Overall, American supporters of imperialist incursions tended to view the French as less

capable colonizers than the British. With a degree of naïvete and cynicism shielded by distance,

the American press lost no time shoveling heaps of derision on what was considered the sheer

silliness of the most recent French advances in North Africa:

But the French do not look upon colonization as a means of building up either the
prosperity or the power of France. They want to convince England that in spite of
the disasters which have overtaken France she can still cultivate those noble field
sports for which England is famous, and they therefore cheerfully incur the
expense and trouble of colonizing Tunis. 12

Indeed, to many Americans, the French efforts were a lesson in colonial futility and the failings

of national character:

10. The Congress of Berlin, held in 1878, convened the European Great Powers to develop a plan to
address the weakening Ottoman Empire, the "sick man" of Europe, and the implications for the balance of
power among Western nations. It was agreed to allow France (which had already colonized Algeria) to
incorporate Tunisia (a welcome distraction from France’s humiliating defeat in the earlier Franco-Prussian
War); Italy was promised what is present-day Libya; Britain gained a protectorate over Cyprus and an
agreement from the French to look the other way while Britain settled a revolt in Egypt. When
diplomatic relations with the Bey failed, the French used the pretense of defending its colony, Algeria,
from the marauding Khroumer, and marched tens of thousands of troops straight into Tunis in the spring
of 1881. Tunisia became a French protectorate on May 12, 1881.
11. Fish quoted by Oren, 260 and 644 note 2: “USNA, RF 59; Dispatches from U.S. Consuls, Tunis:
Fish to Hunter, April 22, 1881 (“It looks as though”); Fish to Hunter, May 5, 1881 (“In plain Anglo-
Saxon”).
12. “A Field Sport,” New York Times, 1 July 1881, 4.

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 The scheme of conquest or colonization which the French Government undertook
to execute at once in several quarters of the world has all along seemed to all
foreigners ridiculous and impracticable. It has been a tacit
assumption that the French were not fitted for the work of colonization,
either military or commercial.13

If Americans viewed the British as more capable in the imperial arena, they nonetheless

expressed reservations about Britain’s methods and the legitimacy of its foreign incursions.

While the French were knee-deep in the Tunisian dunes, Britain sent the famed Sir Garnet

Wolseley, backed by a forty-thousand-man expeditionary force, to bombard Alexandria and crush

the Urabi revolt in Egypt. For some vocal Americans, it was “an act disgraceful to a great and

civilized nation”: 14

. . . British guns have, without sufficient provocation or adequate justification in

law, necessity or public morals, been turned upon Alexandria and worked sad
havoc upon one of the famed old historic cities of the world. Small honor has
England earned for herself by that shameful act of flagrant brutality! 15

[England is that] . . . most courteous highwayman among nations . . . When has

England willingly taken her hands off a desirable province once in her power?
[quoting the words of Herbert Spencer, it was] . . . the unscrupulous greed of
conquest, cloaked by pretenses of spreading the blessings of British rule and
British religion. 16

Yet, as the British became more entrenched in Egypt and the perilous Sudan, American

objections were often smothered by equally insistent ovations. Some in the United States

13. “The French in Asia,” New York Times, 16 Mar. 1884, 8.

14. “The English in Egypt,” Los Angeles Times, 21 Feb. 1885, 2.
15. “American Trade Opportunities in Egypt Destroyed,” Los Angeles Times, 26 July 1882, 2.
16. “The Conquest of Egypt,” New York Times, 15 Sept. 1882, 4.

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dismissed all the imperialist hubbub as the sentimental, misplaced outrage of the ignorant. For

these Anglophiles, invasion by England was “the best thing that could happen” to Egypt:

An American who considers how England’s attack on Egypt originated in motives

which will not bear the slightest scrutiny, and how this final violent seizure of the
country is only the last of a long series of oppressive acts which had for their
result, if not for their deliberately contemplated object, the uprising led by Arabi,
will naturally, and perhaps in heated terms, condemn this and other similar
attempts to suppress all manifestations of the natural resentment of the natives for
their foreign despoilers. Such sentiments can originate only in the biased and
imperfect understanding of the sentimentalist.17

The opinion of Gen. Grant that an English protectorate of Egypt would be the best
thing that could happen for Egypt is quoted throughout the press, but generally
without comment, only that you can see in the way it is proclaimed that the press
and the public welcome with gratitude the kindly words of the great General and
ex-President of the United States.18

However, often the staunchest American defenders of the British imperial mission

alloyed their opinions with provisory remarks. In September 1884, the Century Magazine

recognized the futility of an attempt to rescue the British hero, General Gordon, then hopelessly

trapped in the Sudan, and the resultant blow to British pride, in this detailed letter from an

American expeditionary officer:

No wonder the situation in Egypt is galling to British pride. They seized that
country by a doubtful exercise of power; they have forced Egypt to abandon the
vast empire of the Soudan with a disregard for the loss of life consequent upon a
hasty and unprepared evacuation.19

17. “Flogging the Egyptians,” New York Times, 4 Oct. 1882, 4.

18. “Europe and Arabi’s War: England’s Mistakes and Bismarck’s Manipulations," New York Times, 6
Aug. 1882, 8.
19. R. E. Colston, “Open Letters: The Rescue of Chinese Gordon,” The Century; a popular quarterly
28, no. 5 (Sept. 1884): 790–91 at 791.

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It is clear that, regardless of the side argued, Americans were skeptical of the purity of European

motives and the wisdom of British and French actions in North Africa. What is equally apparent

is that educated Americans were often well-informed on the subject, held vociferous opinions,

and did not hesitate to express them.

As an increasingly industrialized America grew in economic and military strength in the

latter half of the nineteenth century, opinion translated to political and cultural capital. In the

Gilded Age, how Americans viewed the world and moved society in response to that vision

(which in turn drove a new vision) became a vital power in international affairs.

North African Chronology: Early Travels

Edwin Lord Weeks’ paintings of the 1870s and early 1880s may be viewed as particularly

relevant to the heated American discussions on the legitimacy of French and British imperialism.

As these arguments played out in the newspapers, legislatures and parlors of Europe and

America, Weeks was up to his pith helmet in the sands of North Africa, traveling during a time of

active European military engagement with the region. A clearer understanding of Weeks'

personal circumstances will foster a more complete analysis of his paintings as transnational

documents.

By the early 1880s, Edwin Weeks had already trudged through Syria (1872), Egypt (1872

and 1875); Morocco (1872, 1875, 1877 (?), 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881), probably Algeria and

possibly Tunisia. As no known personal diaries or significant cache of Weeks' letters has come

to light, to develop a chronology of his travels has required piecing together references and dates

145
from a wide variety of sources.20 Much of the initial tedious work was accomplished by Ulrich

Hiesinger in his 2002 gallery catalog Edwin Lord Weeks: Visions of India. The chronology

presented here was developed independently of, but is broadly consistent with, that created by

Hiesinger. The accounts diverge in a few respects due to newly discovered material that clarified

obscure points, affirmed or negated previous assumptions. Substantial space has been devoted to

the details of Weeks' travels in order to fill in the many blanks in his biography, to clarify

erroneous accounts, and to assist in the dating and subject identifications of his paintings.

Some scholars have asserted that Weeks spent several uninterrupted years in North

Africa, but at present this does not appear to have been the case. However, Weeks did indeed

spend months at a time there throughout the 1870s and 1880s, though he frequently returned to

Paris for exhibitions and dealer negotiations as well as for the social season. He also

occasionally traveled to the United States and to other cities in Europe, although always

maintaining Paris as his residence. It is hoped that future research will be able to fill in many of

the blanks that are now an unavoidable feature of Edwin Lord Weeks' travel biography.

Weeks' peregrinations started very early in his career, with his first trip to the Holy Land,

Egypt and Morocco. His earliest journey to the Middle East and North Africa was in 1872, when

he was accompanied part of the way by Boston artist A. P. Close, who died en route in Beirut. In

Syria, Weeks traveled overland, camping along the way, from Beirut north to the cliffs of

20. Unfortunately, the dates gleaned from these sources (dated paintings and sketches, acquaintances'
memoirs, occasional letters, newspaper accounts) can seldom be corroborated and therefore must be
considered tentative. In this section I have tried to adhere to a strict chronological framework so that the
"blanks" in Weeks' career may be more easily spotted and addressed by future research.

146
Akoura, then pushing farther through the mountains to Hasroun. Around the time of Close's

death Weeks made a trip to Damascus; after his companion's burial he continued on to Tyre,

Lebanon; Jerusalem; Jaffa and, by November 1872, to Cairo.

Weeks may have traveled to Morocco after he left Cairo; this would date his initial trip to

Morocco to the last weeks of 1872. The primary evidence for citing 1872 as the year of his first

trip to northwest Africa is the painting entitled Tangier, Morocco dated 1872.21 Further support is

offered by another small oil-on-board sketch, Moroccan Market Scene, signed "E. L. Weeks" and

dated 1873, that appeared on the auction market in 1999.22 However, save those inscribed by the

artist, many of the titles of Weeks' early works are vague and/or misidentify the subjects and

settings. Absent some corroborative information, dating Weeks' first Moroccan trip to 1872

should be considered tentative.23

21. Tangier, Morocco (1872) was reproduced in Gerdts, "Americans in faraway places in the Roderic H.
D. Henderson collection," 647.
22. "Moroccan Market Scene, signed E.L. Weeks and dated 1873, l.l. oil on board 12 by 9 in. (30.5 by
22.9cm.) Provenance: Nat Schwartz, Delray Beach, Florida. By descent to the present owner (his niece),"
Sotheby's auction Lot 53, 11 March 1999, New York; Sotheby's, American Paintings, Drawings and
Sculpture (New York: Sotheby's, 1999).
23. Two examples of this labeling issue are The Moorish Bazaar and Courtyard, North Africa. The
subject of the watercolor vaguely entitled The Moorish Bazaar is actually a depiction of one of the
medieval gates of Cairo; the street vendors are somewhat incidental to the architecture. A watercolor that
appeared on the auction market in October, 2012, entitled Courtyard, North Africa (formerly Near East
Courtyard—see Barridoff Galleries, 24) may be identified as another Cairo scene, an interior corner of the
Sultan Qaytbay Funerary Complex (the same corner was painted some years later by British artist Robert
Talbot Kelly, 1861–1934). Further corroborative information in the form of letters, sketches or ancillary
references will help establish the Moroccan chronology. For example, S.G.W. Benjamin describes an
incident near Ceuta that took place when Weeks was in Morocco "for the first time." The Spanish
governor's party was attacked by "Moors;" during the night the governor's escort, also "Moors," were
killed, beheaded and their heads "planted on spears around the camp of the Spaniards." If a record of this
event could be found it would serve to place the approximate dates of Weeks' first trip to Morocco.
Benjamin, Our American Artists, 28.

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 Weeks arrived back in Boston very early in 1873 and worked steadily through the spring

and summer on scenes derived from his recent travels to the East. A September 23, 1873 article

in the Boston Evening Transcript noting "E. L. Weeks is at work on a Mohammedan dervish at

prayer," suggests that the artist remained in Boston through the summer into the fall. Little

information is available for later autumn and winter of 1873 or early 1874, although notices in

the Boston Evening Transcript suggest that he was working steadily in Boston through the

following spring and summer.24 By June 1874 Weeks was aboard the Pereire, on his way to Paris

with J. Foxcroft Cole and family. Over the fall and winter of 1874–75 Weeks remained in Paris

to further his arts training, even as he continued to send paintings of Eastern scenes to the Boston

gallery of Elliott, Blakeslee and Noyes.25

But prior to his departure for Paris, as early as the summer of 1874 Weeks was already

planning to return to the East at his earliest opportunity.26 That next opportunity came late that

24. "E. L. Weeks has several excellent Eastern subjects, and a view in Florida, all of which are good. The
effects in the Eastern subjects are quite good, and his Florida sketch is full of pleasing color and
conscientious work." "The Fine Arts," Boston Evening Transcript, 14 May 1874, 4 col. 5; "Several of our
resident artists will spend the summer across the water, among them Rouse and Weeks, J. Appleton
Brown and others," "Art Item," Boston Evening Transcript, 1 June 1874, 1 col 2.
25. "Mr. Weeks, as is well known, has made a specialty of Eastern subjects, and most of his works in
the present collection are scenes in Egypt and the Holy Land. One of the best . . .'The River Nile,' held a
prominent place on the walls at the last Art Club Exhibition and attracted particular attention. Better even
in some respects is No. 67, 'A Nile Sunset,' the last picture, we believe, from the brush of Mr. Weeks
before his departure from the country. No. 40, 'Pilgrim Caravan at Damascus,' is full of good qualities, as
also are Nos. 23 and 11, 'A Bedouin Herdsman' and 'The Pyramids of Ghizeh.' Besides the paintings in
oil, Mr. Weeks has two exceedingly meritorious water colors in the sale, No. 24, 'The Gate of Thomas,
Damascus,' and No. 56, 'Tower of Hippieus, Jerusalem.' " "The Fine Arts. The Sale at Elliot, Blakeslee &
Noyes's," Boston Daily Globe, 16 Nov. 1874, 5.

26. Ulrich Hiesinger wrote of "his [Weeks'] intention to remain in or near Paris for a time before going on
to the Near East," citing the Boston Evening Transcript of 23 June 1874. Hiesinger, 14 and note 22.

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winter, as reported on March 2, 1875 by the Boston Evening Transcript: “E. L. Weeks has just

left Paris for Cairo, to be gone for two or three months.”27 In early April 1875, according to the

Evening Transcript, he was "now in the East, working hard" even as his paintings were being

shown in Paris at the Societé des Amis des Beaux Arts.28

Early July 1875 found Weeks once again in Paris, presumably not long returned from his

North African travels, laden with sketches and brimming with ideas for new works.29 However,

the restless twenty-six year old remained only about four months in the City of Light. By the

second week in November 1875 Weeks was already headed to Morocco (via Italy)—probably his

third visit—where he planned to pass the winter, intending to return again to Paris in the summer

of 1876.30 All the while he was traveling, Weeks provided a steady inventory of paintings for

27. Hiesinger 16 and note 30, quoting Boston Evening Transcript, 2 March 1875, 6.
28. "A late letter from Paris gives an interesting sketch of what the Boston artists located there are doing.
The writer says, 'American art I am very pleased to find in a flourishing condition here; some of our art
students are working hard, while some who have already acquired a home reputation are doing their best
to improve and give encouraging signs for an art of our own; one of the most prominent points about the
dozen or more of our better artists here is the development of original power . . . J. Foxcroft Cole is
developing a new style, and now has on his easel two large landscapes with cattle that are full of vigor
and nature, with rather more life and variety and warmth than in his earlier works . . . E. L. Weeks is now
in the East, working hard. He has a very good painting in the exhibition of the Societé des Amis des
Beaux Arts, now open in the Rue Les Polletier. S.G.W. Benjamin left on the 12th of March for Havre,"
"Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 6 April 1875, 6 col. 2.
29. "Alma-Tadema and Jules Breton, in my opinion, are represented by two of the best specimens in the
Salon. . . . . Boston is quite well and respectably represented in Paris art circles at present . . . . E. L.
Weeks has lately returned from the East with a number of fine sketches, among them several grand
subjects, which he may use for large pictures with great success. All of them are fine in color and
vigorous in drawing." "Art in Paris. The Pictures at the Salon," Boston Evening Transcript, 2 July 1875, 6
col. 5.
30. “Weeks has left Paris for Morocco, where he will pass the winter, returning to Paris again for the
summer," "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 9 November 1875, 6 col. 3. Citing a letter about
American artists in Florence, the Boston Evening Transcript mentions that "Edward Weeks" was there.
"Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 12 November 1875, 6 col. 4. "The illustrations of Eastern

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Boston exhibitions:

Another group of great interest is that clustered around E. L. Week's [sic] large
sensational canvas, "On the Suez Desert," (130), which, brave in color and full of
swinging motion as it is, yet suffers in its conscious posing, and in its fresh, hard
lines, from its juxtaposition with the sweetly mingled chaste refinement, clearness
and softness of touch in the beautiful Kensett landscape beneath it. A better
success of Mr. Weeks's is its vis-à-vis, the 'Pilgrimage' (79), with its fine
atmosphere, its natural, but not less effective grouping, its brilliant composition
and pleasing story, and still another most excellent Weeks picture is the 'Garden'
(124) with a monk picking flowers, strongly conceived and most capitally
executed as to color and especially as to 'values.' 31

In his 1881 essay on Weeks, S.G.W. Benjamin wrote that during this Moroccan trip the

artist toured Spain, crossed the straits of Gibraltar, and "passed several months in that little

visited and remarkably picturesque city of Tangiers." The available evidence indicates that

Weeks remained in Spain and Morocco from autumn of 1875 through the winter of 1876. Dating

to this period are A Moorish Guard, Tangier: Soldier of the Bashaw of Tangier (signed and dated

on the lower left "E.L.W. / Tanger '75") which shows a new boldness (Figure 4-2); Tending the

Sheep North Africa (signed and dated 1876); and In the Garden (signed and dated 1876,

life by E. L. Weeks are striking and full of merit. One of them—camels and their riders on the desert, with
a boy marching along playing the flute—has the charm of simplicity, and much good color. The camels
are drawn with understanding, and are well planted on their feet, while the figure of the boy is naïve and
in good action. Mr. Weeks has made immense strides the last season, and promises to rank high in the
branch of art he has chosen to follow." Boston Advertiser, 17 January 1876, quoted by Clara Erskine
Clement and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century and their Works, vol. 2 (Boston:
Houghton, Osgood and Co., 1879), 341 (no further citation).
31. Weeks' paintings were part of an exhibition of some two hundred works. "Art Club Exhibition,"
Boston Evening Transcript, 18 January 1876, 4 col. 3. Blakeslee and Noyes also received steady
shipments from Weeks: "A picture by Weeks is also daily expected at the same gallery, which the artist
writes is his most important work." Boston Evening Transcript, 7 March 1876, 6; "The pictures by Weeks
and Enneking for the Centennial have been received by Mr. Blakeslee," "Art and Artists," Boston Evening
Transcript, 21 March 1876, 6 col. 4.

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inscribed Tangier).32

Back to Boston

Whether the young artist returned directly to Paris as planned is not documented. But

even the most worldly, sophisticated travelers get homesick. September of 1876 found Weeks

busy at work in his cozy studio in Newtonville on the outskirts of Boston.33 S.G.W. Benjamin

recalled:

. . . he had a little studio whose windows were fitted up to resemble the casements
of oriental houses, while around the walls were clustered the costumes and
ornaments he had collected in the far East. Beneath the windows stretched a
divan strewn with embroidered stuffs from Grand Cairo. There were few spots in
the vicinity of Boston where one could spend a pleasanter hour than in that little
studio at Newtonville, chatting with the enthusiastic young artist.
There he painted some charming scenes, not only of oriental subjects, but also
bits of the quiet Charles river close at hand.34

Weeks had evidently packed up his Moroccan and Spanish sketches and perhaps photographs

and shipped them home with him. Stationed in the incongruous surroundings of his suburban

Boston studio they inspired a new series of canvases on the East noted for their refined treatment

32. Auction results for "Edwin Lord Weeks" as listed by Artfact, <www.artfact.com>, accessed 12
November 2012.
33. "Weeks is very busy at work at his studio at Newtonville. An exhibition of his pictures at the Art
Club is in early prospect." "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 22 September 1876, 6 col. 5.
"A collection of pictures and studies by Mr. Weeks will be exhibited at the next informal exhibition of the
Boston Art Club, Saturday night, Dec. 2. It will be open to the public on the Monday and Tuesday
following, after which it will remain for some time at the gallery of Blakeslee & Noyes, 127 Tremont
street. The subjects are Oriental, and comprise phases of Eastern life in Morocco, Granada, Egypt and
Palestine." "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 17 November 1876, 6 col. 3.
34. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 28.

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of color and reflected light, among them: Alhambra Windows ("a scene in the chamber of

Lindaraxa, a Moorish Sultana"); A Tiled Mosque and Fountain, Tetuan, Morocco; Under the

Orange Trees, Tangier, Morocco; and An Old Well in a Moorish Garden. Weeks' residence in

Spain and Morocco, followed by diligent production in the latter half of 1876, culminated in an

end-of-year exhibition of some fifty paintings at the Boston galleries of Blakeslee and Noyes.

The Boston Daily Globe singled out one of the exhibition's larger scenes of Tangier, They toil

not, neither do they spin, as a work of "truly wonderful merit":

[the painting] . . . represents a groups of beggars, some of whom are so-called

saints, in every attitude of listless laziness. Every figure is a study from life, and
the lazy sentiment of the scene is shown even in the dogs, which form a
conspicuous feature of the foreground. There is a fine display of color in this
picture, which is of marked merit. 35

The well-attended private reception for the press and friends of the artist acknowledged Weeks'

increasing stature as a professional artist, but more importantly the press reviews marked the

public recognition of his rapid technical advancement and his growing reputation as a

penetrating observer of Eastern culture. The Boston Daily Globe stated, "We have never seen

such a choice collection of paintings of Oriental scenes as this in this country":

35. They toil not, neither do they spin was a scene of "the streets of Tangiers." S.G.W. Benjamin, Our
American Artists, 28. A Moorish Guard is described in the auction catalogue text for Christie's 19th
Century European Paintings, Drawings, Water Colors, and Sculpture, 14 February 1996, New York, Lot
32 (New York: Christie's, 1996); Edwin Lord Weeks: "A MOORISH GUARD, TANGIER: SOLDIER
OF THE BASHAW OF TANGIER signed and dated 'E.L.W./Tanger '75' lower left—oil on paper laid
down on canvas 20 7/8 x 14 1/4 in. (53 x 36.2 cm.)," www.artfact.com, accessed 2 May 2012. The other
paintings mentioned (including Twilight in the Garden of Gethsemane, Camels at Supper and Camel and
Arab) are listed in "At the Picture Galleries . . . The E. L. Weeks Collection," Boston Daily Globe, 7
December 1876, 3.

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 Mr. Weeks has made careful study of some of the most characteristic scenes in the
East, and he has not only depicted their outward aspects, but has interpreted their
interior significance. In his paintings the features of the country, the buildings,
the people, their costumes and modes of life are reproduced with singular felicity
and fidelity. The pictures bear the marks of having been painted from the life, in
the open air; there is a freshness, vitality and force about them, which prove this,
and the opportunities which their subjects afford for vivid and striking contrasts
have been fully improved. 36

Increasing recognition through private galleries and public exhibitions, such as the Philadelphia

Centennial Exhibition of 1876, translated into rising prices for Weeks' paintings, spurred higher

by the consistent advertising of Blakeslee and Noyes.37

For the twenty-seven year-old Edwin Weeks the next year was one of dreams deferred

and realized. His ambitious plan to sail to India around the first of March 1877 for a sojourn of

two to three years was canceled three weeks before his expected departure.38 Presumably Weeks

36. "At the Picture Galleries," 3. "The Art Club rooms will be hung on next Saturday with a collection of
the pictures of E. C. Weeks [sic], the first time of their exhibition in public. On the Monday following
they will be removed to the gallery of Noyes & Blakeslee, where a private reception will be given on the
evening of Wednesday, Dec. 6, to the press and the friends of the artist. The pictures will remain at that
place on exhibition the ten days following." "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 28 Nov. 1876,
6 col. 2.
37. Weeks exhibited An Arab Story Teller at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Thompson, 41 citing United States International Exhibition, 1876 Official Catalog. The sales prices of
Weeks' painting were garnering attention: "Noyes & Blakeslee sold on Monday, at private sale, four of E.
L. Weeks's Eastern subjects for a thousand dollars—a pretty encouraging figure in these times. They
were sold to two parties—two to each." "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 31 Jan. 1877, 6 col.
6. Blakeslee and Noyes were astute marketers who kept up steady advertising: "For this week only! /
The exhibition and sale of / Pictures / by E. L. Weeks, / at the Art Galleries of / Noyes & Blakeslee."
Boston Evening Transcript, 19 December 1876, 5.
38. “E.C. Weeks [sic] proposes to sail for India in about three weeks, for two or three years absence. The
remainder of his collection of pictures at Noyes & Blakeslee's gallery will therefore be disposed of at
public sale at an early day. The pictures will be hung Monday next. Eleven were sold at private sale
during the past week at the artist's own prices. Among them were those which appear in the catalogue as
'The Old Clothes Bazaar, Cairo'; 'Going to Market, Tangier,' 'The Dervish'; 'The Carpet Bazaar, Cairo';
'The Pilgrimage to the Jordan'; 'The Olive Grove, Bethlehem'; 'Landscape, with Moorish Horsemen';
'Camels at Supper, Tangier'; and 'An Old Well in a Moorish Garden, Twilight.' The 'Camels at Supper'

153
was detained in Boston by the prospect of his upcoming marriage or perhaps by his father's

illness. There is little news of the artist until late summer, when on September first he applied

for a passport in order to travel abroad in the company of his wife Fanny [sic] whose age on the

application is given as twenty-three years.39 This was putting the cart slightly ahead of the horse,

as Edwin and Fannie (Francis Rollins Hale) were married a few days later at the Evans House in

Boston on September 12, 1877 by the Reverend George J. Prescott, of the Episcopal Church.40

was purchased by Ola [?] Bull, who will take it back to Norway with him." "Art and Artists," Boston
Evening Transcript, 8 February 1877, 6 col. 7. The trip and auction were canceled: "Mr. Week's [sic]
departure having been deferred for the present, the sale of his works at Noyes & Blakeslee's will not take
place as announced. Several, however, have been sold at private sale within a few days. The large
picture, 'Shoeing a Moorish Charger, Tangier,' 'An Olive Grove at Bethlehem,' 'Moorish Horsemen
Crossing a Brook,' and 'The Reconnoissance,' a Bedouin horseman by the Dead Sea," "Art and Artists,"
Boston Evening Transcript, 15 Feb. 1877, 6 col. 2.
39. The 1877 passport application notes Weeks’ birthdate as October 9, 1849 [though the 9 looks like an
8]. It was witnessed by his friend, the illustrator Frank T. Merrill. The gallery catalog for the Weeks
exhibition at the University of New Hampshire states that “When Weeks was not in America, a close
friend and fellow illustrator, Frank T. Merrill, arranged Weeks’ business affairs and American exhibitions.
Merrill and Weeks grew up together and remained lifelong friends. In Weeks’ absence, Merrill became
the ‘uncle’ to Minnie Weeks Goodwin’s family. Edwin and Frances did not have any children. Thus,
Weeks became a strong paternal figure to his younger sister Minnie and her family.” Ganley 9 (no further
citation). A passport application made by Fannie Weeks at the U.S. Embassy in Paris on 17 October 1916
states that her date and place of birth was 24 February 1856 at Dover, New Hampshire, but the year was
more likely 1854. National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–
1925, U. S. Passport Applications, January 2, 1906–March 31, 1925, ARC Identifier 583830/MLR
Number A1 534, NARA Series M1490, Roll 341, Fannie Hale Weeks.
40. Unidentified newspaper clipping, Weeks Family Scrapbook, "In this city, Sept. 12, at the Evans
House, by Rev. George J. Prescott, Mr. Edwin Lord Weeks of Newtonville to Miss Frances Rollins Hale,
daughter of F. W. Hale, Esq., of Rollinsford, New Hampshire." All previous authors date the marriage of
Weeks to September 1871. However, somewhere along the way 1877 was misread as 1871, resulting in
an understandable error. Weeks’ official marriage record notes his residence at the time as Boston, his
occupation as Artist, the bride’s residence as Rollinsford, New Hampshire, and the bride’s parents as
Frank and Susan L. Hale. Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Town Vital
Collections, 1620–1988, Marriages Registered in the City of Boston for the Year 1877, Record No. 1733,
September 12, 1877. Online records available through Ancestry.com indicate that Frank Hale (Francis W.
Hale) was born in 1827 or 1828 and died on 18 October 1896 at Rollinsford. He married Susan Hays
Lord on 15 July 1850, when she was twenty-two and he twenty-five. In 1870, Frank (described as a
“clerk” in the 1850 U.S. Census, a “merchant” in 1860 and a “cotton trader” in the 1870 U.S. Census) and

154
 Fannie (Figure 4-3) was Edwin's first cousin, the daughter of his mother's sister Susan

(Hays Lord) Hale. For a time, the Hale family lived with Weeks’ grandparents on their farm in

Rollinsford, New Hampshire, where Edwin had likely come to know Fannie. In the eyes of a girl

who spent a good deal of her life on a farm in Rollinsford, surely Edwin Weeks cut an

impressively dashing and romantic figure. No doubt the darkly handsome, energetic world

traveler had his share of admirers at home and abroad, but the tall (for the time, at 5'6"), slender

blond had accomplishments and allure of her own. Fannie must have been a young woman of

considerable pluck, judging from accounts of the adventures the newlyweds were soon to

encounter in Morocco.

Return to Morocco

It is unclear exactly when in the new year Weeks headed back to Morocco for what was

likely the fourth time. Only a few months after the artist's marriage, on January 28th Edwin

Weeks' father, Stephen Weeks, died of cancer.41 During the period of his father's illness Weeks

continued to exhibit in Boston to favorable reviews.42 Arts writers repeatedly singled out Weeks'

Susan lived for a time with Susan’s parents, Edwin P. and Maria Lord, in Rollinsford. Fannie had at least
one sibling, William (b. 18 January, 1856 in Dover, New Hampshire). There were likely two other
children, Samuel and Martha. It appears Samuel died at a young age.
41. His age was recorded as 63 years, birthplace Greenland, New Hampshire, occupation merchant, cause
of death cancer. Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, "Deaths, Registered in the City of Newton for
the Year Ending December 31, 1878," January 28, 1878.
42. "The one thing to be noticed in all the paintings of this artist is the remarkable skill he displays in
keeping the individuality of the colors. By this he produces most charming effects of color, where a less
skillful artist would fail to make the picture more than interesting. There is a decided out-of-door look
about this picture ['Midsummer'], too, which tells the beholders that the artist painted Nature just as he

155
dedication to craft as well as to the merits of his paintings as personal experiences of the East. In

the 1879 Artists of the Nineteenth Century and their Works, Clara Erskine and Laurence Hutton

reprinted the Boston Advertiser's assessment: "Mr. Weeks has taken up a field for study in which

he finds himself almost alone, and has given every effort to the increase of his knowledge of the

life and character of these people who toil in the field. For years Mr. Weeks has traveled in the

East, filling his sketch-book with scenes with which to illustrate his experience there."43

Regardless of family travails, Weeks and his wife had departed Boston by the time

Blakeslee and Noyes had mounted their mid-February exhibition of the artists' recent works:

An extended absence of several years in the East is the occasion of this sale of
Pictures and Studies by Mr. Weeks. The collection offered includes several
pictures painted during his former visit in Syria, Egypt and Morocco, together
with others finished just previous to his recent departure from this country and
which are now for the first time exhibited. As a student of Eastern life, with its
rich color and unique effects, Mr. Weeks stands entirely alone among our Boston
artists; having marked out for himself a bold path in which he has scarcely a rival
in this country.44

By April 1878 the couple was in Tangier.45

found her." Clement and Hutton, 341, quoting from The Boston Advertiser of November 20, 1877.
43. Clement and Hutton, 341, quoting from The Boston Advertiser of February 16, 1878.
44. Introduction to Noyes and Blakeslee, Exhibition and Sale of Pictures by E. L. Weeks (Feb. 19, 20,
1878), (Boston: 1878), quoted by Hiesinger, 18 and note 40.
45. "Notes," originally published in the April 1878 number of the Art Journal (New York) provided the
following regarding a Boston gallery exhibition of Weeks' paintings: "An exhibition at one of the
galleries presented a number of pictures by E. L. Weeks, who is at present studying and painting in
Tangiers. The result of Mr. Weeks's residence and observations in the East appeared in many interesting
illustrations of Egyptian, Moorish, and Arab life, as it appears to the modern and artistic eye. The most
striking, perhaps, was the picture entitled 'An Arab at Prayer in the Desert,' exhibiting with graphic and
even imposing force a picturesque aspect of the sacred ceremonies of Islam. Others, well worthy of
study, were 'A Caravan crossing a Brook, Morocco,' 'Arab Camp: Sunset near the Dead Sea,' 'Pyramids of
Sakara, Egypt,' 'Sunset Effect on the Nile at Boulak,' 'The Arab Story-Teller,' and one, a beautiful Spanish
landscape, 'The Alhambra and Sierra Nevada.' 'A Slave Caravan' brought forcibly before the fancy one of

156
 In the interval between Weeks' departure from Morocco for Boston in 1876 and his return

in 1878, the country had endured the horrifying effects of the worst drought in five hundred

years. Nonetheless, Weeks was determined to investigate the interior of the country, even though

these were the regions most devastated by the drought. This latest excursion in search of

Moroccan subjects, which doubled as an exotic honeymoon for the recently married couple,

nearly killed them both.

The very limited documentation suggests that the couple first went to Tangier, which was

least impacted by the severe conditions.46 With ready access to Europe, a large expatriate

community and well situated port, Tangier and other areas along the northern coast were

insulated from the worsening food shortages in the south and the interior. In Tangier they

developed a close friendship with the Scottish artist Robert Gavin (1826/7–83), who became a

housemate; the trio became quite inseparable.47 Biographer S.G.W. Benjamin wrote that, after

the most dramatic and frequent scenes of the East." "Notes," Art Journal (New York), n.s. 4 (1878):
126–28 at 128.
46. Weeks listed his address as simply "Tangiers" for the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1878 (which
opened on May 1st). He submitted A Moorish Pastoral. Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts:
A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904, Vol. 8
(London: Henry Graves and Co., George Bell and Sons, 1906), 196 and noted by Ganley, 9 who adds that
Weeks also contributed two figure drawings. Also, the April 1878 issue of the Art Journal (New York) in
its review of a Boston exhibition of Weeks paintings noted that " . . . E. L. Weeks, who is at present
studying and painting in Tangiers." "Notes," Art Journal 4, n.s. (1878): 126–28 at 128. However, Weeks
did maintain a correspondence address in Paris in 1878, as the entry for the Salon catalogue of 1878
records "Chez M. Vallet, boulevard Haussmann, 108/ élève de M. Bonnat." Un Chamelier morocain, à
Tanger was Weeks' first Salon contribution. Fink, 403.
47. Robert Gavin, R.S.A., a native of Leith, had "a great gift of color" and distinguished himself by his
travels in America and paintings of "Negro subjects." He traveled about 1875 to North Africa where he
specialized in scenes of "Moorish subjects" that he exhibited at the Scottish Academy. Robert Brydall, Art
in Scotland, its origin and progress (Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1889), 406.
Weeks possibly could have met Gavin earlier in Tangier or even in the United States. Curiously, Weeks

157
spending some time on the coast, the party traveled to Tetuan, where they "took a house" and

enjoyed "a number of romantic camping adventures" in the Atlas Mountains.48 Although

Benjamin makes this sound rather bold, the reality seems rather more tame than the retelling.

Tangier in 1878 was a town of about ten thousand, located about forty-five miles from Tetuan, a

town about twice as large, situated on the slopes of the Riff range. An 1878 guidebook noted

that the "perfectly safe" twelve-hour trip could be made by camels, mules or horses, after

application to the English or American consul for an escort.49 Dating to this trip is Shepherd on a

Hill, Tetuan (signed and inscribed Tetuan, 1878; Figure 4-4).

This was all too predictable for Weeks, who longed to explore areas of the country

seldom experienced by Europeans. When a quarantine of Algerian ports forced the trio to

abandon plans to travel to Algeria, the three settled on taking a steamer down the west coast from

Tangier to Rabat and the nearby holy city of Salé, about five hours by sea from Tangier (or

twelve overland north of Casablanca).50 According to an 1878 guidebook published by John

contributed The Escort of a Moorish Prince—Sunset to the Royal Scottish Academy's 1877 exhibition.
George R. Halkett, ed., The Royal Scottish Academy Notes (Edinburgh: Thos. Gray, 1879), 34. Gavin
lived with Weeks and his wife in Tangier, per Edwin Lord Weeks to Alexander Twombly, 8 December
1878, Rabat.
48. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 29. From this trip Weeks produced the oil Shepherd on a Hill,
Tetuan (inscribed Tetuan and dated 1878), described by Dr. Emily Weeks in the catalogue notes for Lot
126, Edwin Lord Weeks, Sotheby's, 19th Century European Art including Important British Paintings,
New York, October 22, 2009 (New York: Sotheby's, 2009).
49. Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travelers in Spain, 5th ed. (London: John Murray, 1878): 357. "The
soldier is responsible with his life for the safe return of his charge; he is usually selected from the sultan's
body guard."
50. "We did not go to Algeria on account of the quarantine. But I am quite reconciled to the exchange.
Besides being better and more novel this costs only about a third of the Algerian journey and it is the
cheapest place I know of in spite of the famine." The party was advised "on no account" to travel to
Rabat by sea due to the difficulties of landing, but Weeks ignored that advice. Edwin Lord Weeks to

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Murray, Rabat had no inn although lodging might be obtained "at the house of any respectable

Jew." Salé was more inhospitable: "No Christian is permitted to enter within its walls."51 In one

of his rare surviving letters Weeks admitted he knew virtually nothing about these destinations,

despite their relative proximity to Tangier:

Although the place has business relations with Tangier and is distant only one
night by steamer and five days by overland post I would get no reliable
information about it but I knew it was an interesting country and so resolved to
“go it blind.” We were advised on no account to attempt going by sea, as it is
only at rare intervals that lighters can get over the surf at the bar, which is truly
gigantic at most times. But the journey by land involves so much bother and
expense and there was no prospect of getting food for the horses on the road, by
reason of the famine, we decided to risk the steamer—we were most fortunate in
getting ashore.52

From the vantage of a couple of years later, in a rather understated characterization Weeks called

this excursion "the most notable campaign in a hostile country that I have indulged in as yet, and

we got out of it by the skin of our teeth, as it were."53

So the Weeks party traveled south, aware of the famine but not fully comprehending the

prevalent dire conditions. The drought that had begun in 1876—when Weeks left Morocco for

Boston—was exceptional in its severity and its duration. By the summer of 1878 starvation in the

interior had become endemic; huge swaths of the population had flocked to the seaports in hopes

Alexander Twombly, 8 December 1878, Rabat. As Benjamin recalled, satisfied with their "novel and
picturesque experience" in Tetuan, the trio agreed "to take a very perilous trip to some of the cities along
the coast of Morocco, in some of which no foreign lady had ever been seen."
51. Ford, 358.
52. Weeks to Alexander Twombly, Rabat, 8 December 1878, Alexander Stevenson Twombly papers, Box
1, Folder 2 (vol. 2), 16–23, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.
53. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 29.

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of obtaining imported grain. There were few imports to be had; Morocco's economy was already

in a freefall for several reasons: the falling price of wool and grain (already compromised) on the

world market, the spiraling trade deficit, the unrelenting schedule of payments to Britain for

loans to pay war indemnities due Spain, and rising domestic inflation.54 There were simply no

economic reserves to help Moroccans confront the winter drought of 1877–78 and the literal

plague of locusts which followed. In Mogador (Essaouira), a Moroccan port town farther down

the western coast, mothers reportedly ground up bones found in the streets to feed to their

children. The British consul wrote in April 1879 that thousands lay dead by the roadsides; in

some towns half of the population had died of starvation. The desperate flight to the coast in

search of food produced another problem. Unsanitary conditions rose dramatically in seaports;

cholera claimed innumerable victims weakened by hunger. When the cholera subsided in

December 1878, it was replaced by a raging typhoid epidemic.55

This was the Morocco that Edwin and Fannie Weeks and their traveling companion,

Robert Gavin, R.S.A., confronted on their arrival in Rabat.56 Still, no doubt confident that they

could sail away whenever they wished, the drought and its consequences did not deter Weeks'

artistic ambitions. His own words make it quite clear that for him the most compelling aspect of

54. Mike Davis, 106.

55. Mike Davis, 99–108.

56. "Being burdened with much baggage, including household utensils, as we knew that we should find
neither hotel nor pension in Rabat, we preferred to face the perils of the sea. The evening preceding the
sailing of the steamer West we passed at the German Legation, and the Chancellor, recalling his own
experience and the tumultuous horrors of the bar, which he described to us with unnecessary and
appalling realism, predicted that we should not be able to make a landing." Weeks, "Two Centres of
Moorish Art," Scribner's Magazine 29, no. 4 (April 1901): 433–52 at 441.

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this journey was the opportunity to produce novel, even ground-breaking visualizations of

Eastern life:

This is virgin soil for a painter, I believe I am the first who has been here, and no
American or English writer has done much for it . . . .I have seen nothing since
Cairo so interesting and so rich in subjects. 57

In fact, he turned the famine to his professional advantage:

Although we did not expect to find models here on account of the fanaticism of
the people we have been able to turn the famine to account. There are magnificent
types grand looking old men squalid Arab girls with faces like African madonnas
and such lustrous eyes, stranger types from the far of [sic] provinces . . . such as
Gerome [sic] has never rendered because in ordinary times nothing could induce
these people to pose or enter the house of a Christian.—But now on account of the
famine the streets are full of them and for a franc or a little bread they will squat
all day. We are famous for this sort of interested charity and now we are beset by
women with babies and pestilential beggars so we have a choice.

Weeks' letter from Rabat to Boston family friend Alexander Twombly indicates that he was

enthralled by the chance to create images of unusual ethnological merit in addition to one-upping

Jean-Léon Gérôme. It carries an upbeat, confident, even cheeky tone in the face of perilous

circumstances, although at this point for Weeks they were merely inconveniences:

Here the people behave very well although they have a haughty and rather sinister
air. We are not very pleasantly situated, however, after Tangier. We occupy the
only house which could be procured in the only street in which Christians are
permitted to live. There is no hotel or inn of any sort, and the house is a rather
beastly affair, but it keeps the rain off, which is an important item as it has rained
incessantly since our arrival. We most providentially brought two of our Tangier
servants, Mohammed the Black [cook?] and the boy waiter. Without them we
could not exist as there are none to be had here. We sold our horses before
coming and although we were very sorry to part with Mrs. Weeks’ dapple grey, I
am very glad now, for he went into good hands and here he would have starved to
death. A mere handful of dried straw sells for a franc—In ordinary times it costs

57. Weeks to Twombly, 8 December 1878.

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 next to nothing to keep them here or in Tangier but the price of grain is frightful
now—
[7] All the outskirts of both towns and the roadsides are lined with dead and dying
animals horses mules and donkeys. It is painful to look at the poor animals that
still live they are all joints and pinnacles like gothic cathedrals—as for the people
their wretchedness beggars description—I do not speak of the towns people but
the dwellers in tents who have come from the country to beg in the streets of the
town. I suppose there is absolutely nothing to eat for man or beast away from the
towns and precious little in them. We depend for all on our supplies on the
occasional French steamers that are sometimes able to land goods here. We have
nothing to complain of really, except a limited bill of fare.58

Not one to heed the advice of others to the detriment of his own calculations, Weeks was

determined to paint in the holy city of Salé, across the river from Rabat. In his letter, he

underscores the word "holy," but the ban on entering the sacred city made it all the more

desirable. This passage, in a voice somewhat querulous and tinged with arrogance, reveals both

the artist's determination and his impatience:

Sometimes we are ferried over to Sallee accompanied by our soldier and there we
are usually mobbed before we get back by the small boys. Our guard protects the
rear and menaces the enemy with his stick. There are two or three Europeans in
Rabat, but no Christian has ever lived in Sallee and before the bombardment [?]
by the French about twenty years ago, no Christian was allowed to enter the city.
Sallee is a Holy city—that is the reason, however there are things in Sallee
[ineffably?] picturesque and when I want excitement I am going over there to
paint them. I will take my soldier and demand another from the bashaw of that
holy town and we will see what can be done. It is not a pleasant prospect
however—

Despite the warnings of the Spanish consul that sketching in Salé would be "out of the question,"

Weeks trudged to the city walls on foot through the deep sand, picking his way around the

scavenged bones of dead animals along with Gavin and "the lady of our party of three, whose

58. Weeks to Twombly, 8 December 1878.

162
curiosity was stronger than her discretion." Obviously, Fannie Weeks, described by her husband

as "the first American or European lady to my knowledge who has ever set foot" in Salé, was no

wallflower:

We had got well into the town, through the inner girdle of ruins and gardens,
before the inhabitants began to realize that their sanctity was being profaned. Our
reception was milder than we had been led to expect; most of the citizens who
lined the walls and crowded the doorways contented themselves with merely
staring at our companion with speechless amazement, for only those adventurous
souls who had journeyed to Tangier, or whose business took them to Rabat, had
ever seen a European lady face to face, and there were but two living at that time
on the other side of the river. A few stones were thrown, it is true, but by street
urchins, who immediately took refuge behind the inviolable sanctity of mosque
doors when pursued by our escort. 59

Once back in Rabat, life returned to quiet, if spartan, security. Weeks lamented that "It is

rather dull for my wife as there is not a lady in the place of European extraction and the only

being she can sympathize with is the Spanish consul’s puppy which we sometimes borrow for

the sake of his company." Nonetheless, the couple seemed to enjoyed the simple pleasures of

rowing on the Bou Regreg that runs between Rabat and Salé or, on clear and windless days,

sitting perched on the ancient walls of the Casbah and gazing out to sea.

59. Weeks To Alexander Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879, Alexander Stevenson Twombly papers,
Box 1, Folder 2, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University. "After a few subsequent visits had
accustomed the citizens to our presence the spectre of Moslem intolerance faded into thin air, and more
than once the intervention of venerable and authoritative Moors cleared the streets for us, and there was
always some sturdy bystander who volunteered to perform police duty." Weeks, "Two Centres of
Moorish Art," 445–46. In S.G.W. Benjamin's 1881 account this incident is made out to be much more
hazardous. Weeks is quoted as stating "Upon entering Sallee, which is the Mecca of the Moors, although
we had a soldier to precede us, we were actually pursued by a mob, who finally gave us a shower of
stones . . . They told us it would be impossible to paint in Sallee on account of the fanaticism of the
inhabitants—only recently have Christians been allowed even to enter the gates. I always had a cavalry
soldier with me, however, and after the excitement of the first frenzy, I found no difficulty in getting
studies." Benjamin, Our American Artists, 29.

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 The lack of social engagements was muted by the satisfactions of sketching life along the

broad river, the massive architecture of the Red Castle ("a lesser Alhambra"), the "buried remains

of Roman baths," and the Hassan Tower, as well as the prospect of desert escapades just beyond

"the least known cities in Africa after Timbuctoo." 60 Even the often temerarious Weeks was

careful not to venture too far from Rabat without his "soldier from the Bashaw," lest he be swept

off by hostile Berbers.61

Brimming with confidence in his new work, and no doubt weary of negotiating the

increasingly acute famine conditions, in December Weeks was already thinking ahead to the

1879 Salon. By this time Weeks had been in Morocco eight months or more. He wrote to

Alexander Twombly:

However we must [?] not have to stay here long and the next place she will see
will be I hope the Champs Elysees and the Salon [?]. I shall send a large picture
there which is far ahead of anything I have done yet, and I have some new ones
which I think are better in quality and sounder in values than anything I have yet
exhibited. 62

But by the end of December matters went drastically awry. Relentless pounding surf

made the silted bar at the mouth of the river impossible for supply boats to cross.63 Food became

60. Weeks to Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879.

61. "Inland and beyond the tall 'Hassan tower' the river winds away into a region of high table land. I am
told that if we venture very far in this direction we are liable to be captured by the Berbers but it is safe
for an hour and a half." Edwin Lord Weeks to Alexander Twombly, 8 December 1878.
62. Weeks to Twombly, Rabat, 8 December 1878.
63. "The difficulty of landing there is on account of the bar at the river mouth. The surf somewhat
resembles the rapids at Niagara, and in my sleeping room which looked out onto it I would hear the
thunder of it all night and sometimes feel the jar and concussion—", Weeks to Twombly, Paris, 10
December 1879.

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even scarcer. The couple's plan to stay in Rabat for three months stretched into six as disease

and misery spread even to the town's European residents. In this excerpt from a letter to

Twombly from Weeks, written some months after he, his wife and Gavin had made it back to

Paris, all traces of arrogance have evaporated:

We were in Rabat during the height of the famine and I never before saw such
misery, such living skeletons clad in rags—our ____ was surrounded by them the
whole time, and although we had four or five pensioners in the house all the time
and gave away a good deal of bread we were not rich enough to make much
impression on the mass of suffering: during most of the time two or three
steamers [lay?] outside with cargoes of flour, but could not communicate with the
shore, although desperate attempts were made daily by the lighter men. It was
curious to see the starved dogs greedily licking up the flour spilt in the streets.
One incident which I witnessed one day may give you some idea of it. Just
beyond our door there seemed to be a great commotion in the main street, a dense
crowd of ragged and [forlorn?] humanity was surging and seething above some
hidden object. Soldiers and shopkeepers were interfering and beating some of
those on the outskirts, but blows could not take them away from the centre of
attraction. Although I stood some six feet above them on a step I could not make
it out at all but it seemed like a sort of Donneybrook fair. My impression was that
they had some criminal there and were tearing him limb from limb. At last,
through an opening among all the legs and bodies I saw a ragged basket with a
few carrot tops protruding—at that moment a boy emerged with a mouth full of
green leaves and he was seized by an old hag who captured and swallowed them
herself. The mystery was solved—such sights were of everyday occurence.64

With escape from the famine impossible by sea, Weeks planned a camel journey overland

to Casablanca, from there to catch a steamer to Tangier and thence to Europe. But as they were

making the final arrangements to leave Weeks was struck down by "typhus fever." Near death,

he languished for a month.65 At the height of his illness, Fannie contracted it:

64. Weeks to Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879.

65. Benjamin, Our American Artists, 30.

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 Poor Gavin was the worst sufferer for while we were insensible most of the time
he had to combine the functions of doctor and nurse. No European came near us
when the nature of the disease was known. Gavin was hardly able to stand up
from sickness and want of sleep as well as scarcity of grub. We always lived well
before, but it required much engineering to supply our table I assure you, and he
had no time to think of himself. 66

All of them survived, only to be nearly drowned when their boat was swamped by a storm as

they approached Tangier ("What a lark—" wrote the understated Weeks).

Eventually they made it back to Paris, where the reliable Gavin remained a member of

the household. Weeks reached Paris too late to contribute to the Salon of 1879.67 Although one

American newspaper reported in October that the resilient Weeks was planning to return to

Africa "at once," on December 10th Weeks was still in Paris, writing to Alexander Twombly of

his intention to remain there until after the upcoming Salon.68 To the Salon of 1880 Weeks

submitted La porte de l'ancien 'Fondat,' dans la sainte ville de Salé (Maroc) and the sun-

drenched Un embarquement des chameaux sur la plage de Salé (Maroc) (36 x 61 inches, Figure

4-5), a study in diagonals, contrasts and bold color.69 His reputation was gaining momentum, as

66. Weeks to Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879.

67. "E. L. Weeks of Boston, who for three years has been maturing in Morocco his peculiar faculty for
atmospheric expression, had two pictures well placed in the Royal Scotch [sic] Academy, and they were
favorably criticised; but he reached Paris too late to enter for the '79 Salon." "Art Notes," Art Amateur
(July 1879): 32. Weeks to Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879.
68. "E. L. Weeks has sent from Paris a collection of paintings that are indicative of very decided progress
and ability. He returns to Africa at once." "Art News," Art Amateur (Oct. 1879): 98.
69. Fink, 403. Weeks' residence is listed as Paris, rue d'Orsel, 42. To the Royal Academy exhibition for
1880 Weeks contributed The Bashaw of Rabat and his escort at the gate of the Kasbah-Rabat-el-Fath,
Morocco; his address is listed as 7, Rue Scribe, Paris. Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A
Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904, Vol. 8 (London:
Henry Graves and Co., George Bell and Sons, 1906), 196.

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a Paris correspondent for the Boston Evening Transcript noted:

The American artists show well this year. Weeks of Boston (the catalogue
bestows on him a title, and calls him Lord Edwin Weeks) exhibits two very strong
pictures of Oriental life, both of which were sold before the Salon had been open
two weeks. Mr. Bridgman must look to his laurels, as Mr. Weeks is a powerful
competitor in his own line.70

Another American reviewer found "very pretty" the "line of camels against the blue, coming

reluctantly down a steep sand-bank," but added that it was a pity that Weeks "could not add to his

stock of good qualities the surplus of academic correctness possessed by certain of his

neighbors."71

The French critics were also beginning to pay attention. La Press was captivated by

Weeks' camel, but perhaps more importantly appreciated the artist's technical dexterity, precision

and presentation of visual truth, not an insignificant compliment for an upstart American:

Il y a une très grande vérité dans l’Embarquement des chameaux sur la plage
de Salé, au Maroc, par lord Edwin Weeks. Rarement nous avons vu peindre avec
plus de talent l’utile mais peu gracieux animal que les poètes orientaux appellent
le navire du désert.
Sa laide tournure, sa physionomie désagréable, la maladresse de ses long
membres grêles, les colorations fauves de son corps â moitié pelé, tout cela a été
saisi avec justesse et rendu avec habileté par lord Edwin Weeks, à qui nous
devons un tableau vraiment très pittoresque et très vrai.72

But his recent Salon successes, the pleasures of Paris and the still-fresh memories of nearly dying

in Rabat and drowning in the Mediterranean could not keep Edwin Lord Weeks, nor the

70. "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 22 June 1880, 7 col. 2.
71. This last was a likely reference to the work of F. A. Bridgman. Sophia A. Walker, "Fine Arts. Letters
on the French Salon," Independent 32, no. 1643 (1880): 6.
72. Louis Enault, “Le Salon de 1880," La Press, 1 June 1880, 1 col. 6, at col. 2.

167
formidable Fannie, from Africa:

We shall remain here probably till after the Salon opens and then I think we shall
all go south again. I certainly do not care to fare another winter here. The
conceited Parisians think Paris the only place in the world, but its attractions
cannot compensate for the long dark nights of winter / when one cannot do half a
day’s work and must pay double for the privilege of living here. It is the foremost
place in the world to study technique and measure one’s self by comparison with
others but not a place to live in when you know the Mediterranean. Mrs. Weeks
seems ready for an expedition to Fez which we could not reach before, on account
of the famine: if it is next fall, we may try it.73

Next fall it was. The travelogues of two contemporaries offer a glimpse into the Weeks'

1880–81 sojourn to North Africa. "In the Footsteps of Fortuny and Regnault," penned for

Century Magazine by Elizabeth Williams Champney (wife of fellow Boston artist James Wells

Champney) records Edwin Weeks working in the Granada studio of Mariano Fortuny, which was

likely a prolonged detour prior to the Weeks' autumn arrival in Morocco. Before his death in

November of 1874, Fortuny had taken a home with a huge open courtyard-atelier in the Realejo

Bajo, at the foot of the hill of the Alhambra.74 Mrs. Champney recalled of this idyllic setting:

The beauties of Granada have been sung so often and so well, that we fancied we
knew the place before we drove up the long hill, arched by noble trees, which
leads from the city to the Alhambra . . . we realized that the charm of the place
cannot be conveyed by any amount of fine writing. It must be felt to be
appreciated, and the longer felt the stronger the fascination. Fortuny's studio was
occupied by Mr. Edward [sic] Weeks. The hospitalities of the place were offered
us most cordially, and here, while the gentlemen painted from Fortuny's
models,—pretty Candida, in dazzling white, rose, and orange, and old Mariano,
the gypsy, who posed for the 'Torreoro Andaluz,' belonging to M. de Goyena,—

73. Weeks to Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879.

74. "This courtyard served for an atelier, when he wished to work in open air. On one side a garden, from
which was a splendid view, then the offices and a number of rooms . . ." Jean Charles [Baron] Davillier,
Life of Fortuny with His Works and Correspondence (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1885): 107.

168
 we sat and chatted, or listened to the tinkle of a guitar, and caught a glimpse of a
graceful girl dancing the fandango in a neighboring garden, to the timing of
castanets.75

Certainly Fortuny had a significant influence on the work of Edwin Weeks, a topic that will be

taken up later in this volume.

According to the Art Amateur, in late summer of 1880 Weeks was "diligently cultivating

Oriental subjects in Algiers."76 By winter Edwin and Fannie were back in Morocco. The

December entries from A Winter in Tangier and Home through Spain, the travelogue of Mrs.

Howard-Vyse (a close friend of Lady Drummond-Hay, wife of the British consul stationed in

Tangier) describe the Howard-Vyses and the Weeks enjoying the hospitality of Bruzaud's Hotel

(the "Villa de France") in Tangier where they became acquainted over leisurely dinners and

garden conversations. At the time Weeks kept a studio at the American Consul's residence, a

building still owned today by the United States government that now houses the Tangier

American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies.77

75. Elizabeth Wells Champney, "In the Footsteps of Fortuny and Regnault," Century Illustrated Monthly
Magazine n.s. 23, 1 (Nov. 1881–Apr. 1882): 15-34 at 29-30. The Champneys left for their journey in the
summer of 1880. It should be noted that James Champney, and possibly his wife, were also in Spain in
1875, as was Weeks; thus there is a remote possibility that they encountered Weeks working in Fortuny's
studio some years prior to the 1880 trip. The 1905 auction catalog for Weeks' estate lists an oil sketch,
"Mariano" Playing Guitar—Well Known Gypsy Musician—Granada, Spain.
76. Greta, "Boston Correspondence," Art Amateur (October 1880), 94.
77. "The approach to it is up a narrow lane, which was ankle-deep in mud, as far as a gateway, which led
into a pretty terrace-garden, full of all sorts of flowers. I was most thankful to reach the hotel after a most
fatiguing walk of more than a mile. The hotel is quite a small house, what would be called an auberge in
France, but a large wing is now being added to it. It has a fine view of the town . . . ," Mrs. Howard-
Vyse, A Winter in Tangier and Home through Spain (London: Hatchards, 1882), 4 (the hotel), 5 (dined
together in the company of British officers on leave), 26 (Fannie gave a tour of Edwin's studio), 39
(garden conversations with Fannie), 41 (purchased a sketch of the Holy Well at Salé for Christmas gift),
42 (Weeks sketching in the animal yard), 43 (Weeks breaks his rule about never selling a sketch; sends

169
 Weeks, however, was not content to remain for long in familiar Tangier. When an

extended season of bad weather derailed the couple's long-held plans for a trip to Fez, they

decided to start again for the west coast of Africa. This time they would venture farther south, to

Mogador (Essoueria) and then to the city of Morocco (Marrakech), the imperial capital of the

Almoravid dynasty. On New Year's Eve 1880 they embarked on the French packet steamer

Souerah, a booking that little pleased the normally fearless Fannie:

She wished to wait for an English vessel. She said "they had made a great many
voyages in both English and French ships. The French feed you best, but the
English never lose their heads in danger." — N.B. The Souerah was afterwards
wrecked on her return voyage at Casablanca, but all hands were saved.78

Mogador in January proved delightfully salutary. Brilliant warm weather, southern

breezes and "almost uninterrupted sunshine" beckoned the couple to linger.79 Weeks was

reluctant to leave. However, with a military escort assigned by the governor of Mogador the

party set off for Marrakech through the 129 miles of deep sand and scrub, stunted with "thorn

trees of ghostly paleness," overrun with "hordes of small ground rats," and infested with stinging

photographs of his paintings as Christmas cards).

78. Weeks, Two Centres of Moorish Art, 449; Howard-Vyse, 41. Apparently the steamer Souerah ran the
Tangier-Rabat-Casablanca-Magazan-Mogador route, per Adophe von Conring, Marroco, das Land und
die Leute (Berlin: G. Hempel, 1884), 197.
79. Works such as A Camel Caravan at the Shela Gate (“E.L. Weeks/Shela 1880”, lower right; oil on
canvas; 35 ½ x 61 in.; noted in Thompson 249) indicate that the Weeks may first have returned to Rabat,
and then went on to Mogador. Also from this period is Weeks' Desert Prayer signed and inscribed
"mogador 1881." The 1878 cholera and typhus epidemic, which afflicted both Edwin and Fannie Weeks,
killed half the population of Mogador. Felix A. Mathews, "Cruise of the United States Steamer
Quinnebaug to the Western Ports of Morocco," in Department of State, Reports from Consuls of the
United States on the Commerce, Manufactures, etc., of their Consular Districts, No. 1—October, 1880
(Washington: Department of State, 1880), 23.

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insects and annoying vermin. The trek involved considerable discomfort and known risk, which

is perhaps why years would go by without Europeans visiting Marrakech.80

Once there the party, which presumably included Fannie as well as at least one unnamed

other (likely Robert Gavin), came under the protection of Sid Bou Bekr, a wealthy local capitalist

with ties to British trading firms in Mogador.81 Although greeted with general courtesy Weeks

was restricted in his movements around the city, corralled in an assigned house or, when

sketching in the streets ("a highly objectionable business to the orthodox Moor"), followed

closely by two guards.82 Weeks wrote most enthusiastically about sketching the medieval

Koutoubia (Kutubiyya) Mosque, its minaret soaring some 250 feet; the twelfth-century Bab

Agnou, entrance to the royal casbah and one of the nineteen gates of the city; and the snow-

crowned summits of the Atlas Mountains that served as backdrop for the "somewhat grim and

sombre" architecture. Yet his description of the city is elegiac; the "relics of its prouder days"

now forlorn and decayed:

80. See Weeks, "Two Centres of Moorish Art," 449 and Arthur Leared, Morocco and the Moors (London:
Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1876), II, 2, 101 and relevant chapters. While Weeks was
in Morocco his representatives in America continued to maintain his exhibition presence, showing for
example "Moorish Shepherd" at the Lotos Club in New York (with works by Edward Moran and
Wordsworth Thompson among others). "Saturday Night at the Lotos," New York Tribune, 27 March
1881, 12 col. 2.
81. Sid Bou Bekr was both "envied and hated by his countrymen" according to Leared, 125. A French
account reports that Weeks was there with his wife and "M. Gavier [sic] artiste anglais de l'Académie
royale de Londres." Triolet (Paul Mahalin), "Au bout de la lorgnette: M. Edwin Lord Weeks," Le
Gaulois, 11 October 1881, 2 col. 3.
82. Sid Bou Bekr had only to hold up a finger to discourage the curious from getting too close to Weeks:
"The first man who approached too near was arrested and hustled off into the fondak . . ." Weeks, "Two
Centres of Moorish Art," 450. Weeks' experience closely tracks that of Arthur Leared as described in his
Morocco and the Moors (1876).

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 It would be impossible to imagine a spot more deeply buried beneath the dust of
ages, or bound more irrevocably to the past, and more remote in every way from
the life and movement of the present.83

The North African Paintings: Reception and Reputation

Parisian reviewers were deeply impressed by Weeks' last two trips to Morocco. For the

French, a glimpse into those coveted and controversial desert territories and peoples made

Weeks' paintings interesting; that Weeks obtained them only by dashing about in peril of his own

life made them compelling. The artist's on-the-spot observations and experiences added

credence to his personal interpretations of North Africa, but more importantly, at least for

marketing purposes, elevated them to achievements gained by a rare combination of artistic

vision, raw courage and dogged perseverance.

Moreover, though Weeks' images did not glorify or even obviously support the French or

European presence in North Africa, neither did they pose difficult questions. This was a

welcome contrast to American officialdom, especially the American Consul in Tunis George

Washington Fish who denounced the violence and subterfuge of the French when on a flimsy

excuse they launched into Tunis in April 1881 (to the humiliation of the Italians and the

consternation of the British). Echoing Fish, the American popular press had kept up a steady

drumbeat roundly criticizing the French for stirring up trouble in Tunis and eastern Morocco with

the obvious intent of expanding their protectorate outward from Algeria. Although unstated,

considered against the background of general American public opinion of the French as

83. Weeks, "Two Centres of Moorish Art," 451.

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politically conniving and administratively inept, here at last was an American who apparently

had French interests at heart.

Transatlantic political conversation about harsh social, economic and military realities in

North Africa as well as deep personal experience and professional ambition framed Weeks' early

submissions to the Paris Salon, each devoted to a Moroccan subject. The first of these was the

1878 Un Chamelier morocain, à Tanger; followed in 1880 by Une embarquement des chameaux

sur la plage de Salé (The Camel Transport, Morocco) and La porte de l'ancien "Fondat," dans la

sainte ville de Salé; and in 1881 by Chameaux auprès d'une citerne (39.25 x 77 inches). In 1882

Weeks submitted L'avant-garde d'une caravane du Soudan allant à Maroc and Une caravane du

Soudan entrant dans une Fondat à Maroc, the last of his Moroccan-themed Salon

contributions.84

Caravans and camels, the ubiquitous modes of transport in nineteenth century North

Africa and the Levant, were staples of nineteenth-century paintings of the region. Weeks

incorporated the animals and their riders into many of his North African and Indian paintings

either as principal or secondary subjects. Not only did he enjoy drawing animals of all kinds—a

favorite occupation of his youth—but they were proven pleasers of crowds and critics. Weeks'

The Camel Rider (Figure 4-6) of 1875 (12 x 14 inches), in which the backlight strips the

landscape of color and the figure of definition, is highly reminiscent of Léon Belly's much-

lauded Pilgrims Going to Mecca (a monumental 63.5 x 95.25 inches, Figure 4-7), awarded a first

84. Fink, 403. For these entries, Weeks' various Parisian addresses were listed as follows: 1878, Chez M.
Vallet, boulevard Haussmann, 108; 1880, Paris, rue d'Orsel, 42; 1881 and 1882, avenue de Villiers, 136.

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class medal at the 1861 Salon. The singular success of Belly's painting rested on the artist's

dramatic manipulation of glaring light and foregrounded positioning of the viewer, a formula that

Weeks was clearly experimenting with in The Camel Rider. The immediacy of Belly's mounted

riders, precisely rendered against a sweeping desert panorama, with the winding caravan

disappearing into the horizon had set a high bar for the portrayal of North African life.

Weeks' similarly-themed Salon submissions were, in terms of conception, composition

and technique, indisputably more conventional than Belly's Pilgrims Going to Mecca.

Regardless, what does emerge from The Camel Rider and Weeks' earliest Salon submissions is

the artist's preoccupation with the visual effects of intense sunlight, his exploration of color and

contrast, and his interests in the prosaic scenes of everyday North African life. They portray a

culture ancient, vital, peaceable—though armed and independent.

In addition, these early Salon submissions reveal an artist still experimenting,

investigating, molding his personal style and defining his signature subjects, although affinities

with Bonnat and Gérôme are readily identifiable. Un embarquement des chameaux sur la plage

de Salé (Figure 4-5) employs a sharply defined diagonal wedge that spans the canvas to

backlight the figural groupings, in a manner strikingly similar to that employed by Léon Bonnat

in Cheiks arabes dans les montagnes (1872; Figure 4-8). In Chameaux auprès d'une citerne

(Figure 4-9) Weeks bisects the canvas with a swath of azure, recalling Gérôme's gradient sky in

Bonaparte Before the Sphinx (1867–68; Figure 4-10), but with a bold uniformity and intensity of

color.

Weeks' paintings however bear few of the hallmarks of many by Gérôme, in which the

ostensibly mundane figures and settings are often manipulated to create a subtext of violence,

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degradation, sensuality and decay. Although it may be argued that images such as Un

embarquement des chameaux or Chameaux auprès d'une citerne were likely to impress Salon

patrons with the backwardness of Moroccan society and, by implication, the superiority of

French. In this sense Weeks' Moroccan paintings may be read as promoting the "civilizing

mission" rationale for French imperialism.

However, the leaden, smoke-filled skies, wretched poverty and overcrowded slums of

industrializing Europe were beginning to produce a new apprehension regarding progress

divorced from the natural world, indifferent to the past. This was the foundation of a

contemporary counterargument to the much louder, general clamor for colonialist incursions into

Africa. Weeks' paintings, and his words, speak to this as well:

No other Moslem country has so long resisted and successfully baffled the
aggressive progress of modern civilization . . . Although the isolation which has
permitted the inhabitants to live on in the same conditions which were dear to
their ancestors is mainly owing to the political and geographical causes which
have made Morocco a bone of contention between European powers, not a little
of its comparative immunity from the blessings attendant upon modern progress is
due to the ingenious and subtle diplomacy of the Moorish race— . . . aided by the
seeming naïve but devious policy of these natural diplomats, as well as by the
mutual jealousy and mistrust with which each European power views its
neighbor's advances in Morocco, we may yet have many years in which to enjoy
what is almost the only country left to grow old in its own way.85

Weeks' sentiments may be perceived as disturbing and patronizing, evidence of his knowing

collusion with Western attempts to mystify, separate and tacitly condemn a society that, through

perceived sloth and militant ignorance, allowed a once magnificent civilization to fall to ruin. As

Linda Nochlin pointed out in her seminal article "The Imaginary Orient," images of Eastern

85. Edwin Lord Weeks, "Two Centres of Moorish Art," 433–34.

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societies became valuable only on the point of their destruction; finally they were seen as

picturesque "subjects of aesthetic delectation" to be preserved as "precious remnants of a

disappearing way of life."86 Indeed Weeks mused that Morocco should be left:

. . . for a few decades yet, or even a century, and allow it to exist as a museum of
antiquity, a working model of the Middle Ages; the silence of its cities
undisturbed by noise of factories and tramways, and its broad, sunny reaches of
open country untraversed by railways or macadamized roads.87

Edwin Weeks falls squarely into Nochlin's analysis, an art historical approach that has dominated

the interpretation of paintings by Weeks and his Orientalist contemporaries for decades.

Might there be a more layered reading? If Weeks termed Moroccan policy (and national

character, by extension) "seeming naïve but devious," he also recognized that it existed only to

counter the European powers' "mutual jealousy and mistrust," in effect creating a cultural

stalemate held steady by the superior negotiating abilities of the cornered, out-gunned

Moroccans. What of his somewhat sarcastic reference to "the blessings attendant upon modern

progress"? Weeks may well have feared that the accelerating imposition of European-defined

"progress" would destroy those picturesque scenes that Nochlin argues appealed to refined

aesthetic tastes, but what he wrote about was the potential damage to the character of the

Moroccan people and to the "surpassing beauty" of the country. He wrote in similarly wistful

terms about the encroaching tourist trade in the Alps.88 In Weeks' opinion, the vast open

86. Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," Art in America 71 (1983), reprinted in Nochlin, The Politics
of Vision, Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 33-59 at
50.
87. Edwin Lord Weeks, "Two Centres of Moorish Art," 434.
88. Weeks, "The New Switzerland."

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landscape, free of factories, trams and macadamized roads, molded the unique culture of

Morocco and fostered memorable, stunning, deeply moving expressions of art, architecture and

music. Stronger than his fantasy of a living museum is his lament that there is no country left to

"grow old in its own way;" modern "progress" means inexorable integration and cultural loss—

and not only for Morocco.

Seen in this light, the rhythms of everyday life captured in such paintings as Open

Market, Morocco (Figure 4-11); Arrival of a Caravan Outside the City of Morocco (Figure 4-12);

Scene at Salé, Morocco and Powder Play City of Morocco, Outside the Walls (4-14) address

what Weeks termed the "marked and subtle affinity" of the landscape, the people, and the culture.

They speak to a sentimental regard for the past, as they also speak to a valid concern for the

future and an awareness of the social and political integrity of the present. This attitude did not

escape French or American writers on the arts, who in the coming decade were more likely to

compare Weeks' paintings to those of Eugène Fromentin rather than to the markedly different

vision of Gérôme.89

With his paintings of Algeria, leading French Orientalist and highly-regarded critic

Eugène Fromentin (1820–76) established a reputation for work of intellectual depth and dramatic

power even as he strained against the repressive conventions of the Academy.90 Dispensing with

89. “Un joli tableau est celui de M. Weeks, le Voyage du rajah à Jodhpore. Il y a un peu du Fromentin
dans cette peinture qui, pourtant, ne cherche pas à l’imiter.” "Petits Salons," La Presse, 28 January 1891,
n.p. col. 2. This perception was echoed in an article by “an eminent art critic resident in New York” who
found Weeks, as an Orientalist, to stand “about half way between Fromentin and Verestchagen.” “Edwin
Lord Weeks,” Art Interchange, 94.
90. The first of Fromentin’s three trips to Algeria was in 1846, a surreptitious visit to attend painter
Charles Labbé’s sister’s wedding. Two longer stays in 1847/48 and 1852/53 provided notes and sketches

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the notion of the Orient as feverish fantasy, a model perfected in Delacroix's Death of

Sardanapalus (1827), Fromentin grounded his images in his personal experience of North Africa.

The transformation was so complete, contemporary critic Albert Wolff observed that the “Orient

does not resemble any of the African pictures which were painted before Fromentin.”91

Although the casual references to Weeks and Fromentin do not surface in print until the

early 1890s and were never insistent (as was the association of F. A. Bridgman with Gérôme, for

example), they offer some insight into the interpretation of Weeks' Moroccan paintings and his

later paintings of India. To invoke Fromentin's vision of North Africa in the context of Weeks'

paintings is to recall a particular artistic attitude toward visualizing the Orient as vast, majestic,

noble, graceful, dignified. Also, it is to acknowledge the artists' common attention to intense,

burning light; precisely modulated color; dramatic organization of space; and dedication to

authenticity filtered “with absolute but never with brutal truthfulness.”92 There is the sense in

Fromentin's work that the region cannot be circumscribed by a painted canvas—not

geographically, not temporally, not culturally: “He always and everywhere confers upon the

for paintings and for two travel books, Un Eté dans le Sahara (1857) and Une Année dans le Sahel
(1859).
91. “This Orient does not resemble any of the African pictures which were painted before Fromentin; it is
from the artist’s personal accent that the charm of the work arises . . . " Albert Wolff, Notes upon Certain
Masters of the XIX Century (New York: Gilliss Bros. & Turnure, 1886), 64. Albert Wolff, born in
Germany and natualized French citizen, was a highly respected critic: “There is no other man with
influence as great. His power was absolute. A word from him made or unmade a man; a favorable notice
of a particular picture in the columns of Figaro sold that picture at the artist’s own price.” “Albert Wolff.
From a Paris Letter to the Tribune," Critic (New York), n.s. 17 (9 January 1892): 28-29.
92. “Eugene Fromentin,” Art Amateur 12, no. 1 (Dec. 1884), 9.

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creature of the Orient the real grace, the distinction of the whole race.”93 This is the poetic,

romantic Orient, at once a projection of Western fantasy and a counterweight to Western society.

Whether Weeks was familiar with the works of Fromentin is not known, but close

correspondences may be observed in certain works of the two artists, for example Arrival of a

Caravan Outside the City of Morocco (Figure 4-12) and Halte de muletiers, Algerie (1868;

Figure 4-13). Weeks' Powder Play City of Morocco, Outside the Walls (1881–82; Figure 4-14)

and Fromentin's A Fantasia (Salon of 1869; Figure 4-15) both depict a wild spectacle of daring

horsemanship, "a luxury of vision for the eye."94 Although Weeks' figures are not caught in quite

the same frenzy of action, the painting shares with Fantasia a similar division of space,

93. “When he paints the Arab at rest with his horses browsing untethered beside the tent, he is awed by
the mysterious grandeur of such a scene . . . He always and everywhere confers upon the creature of the
Orient the real grace, the distinction of the whole race;” “In Fromentin the draughtsman caught the most
admirable movements; the colorist saw the matter with his choice sense of hue; and the poet, for his part,
added some mysterious, delicious reverie to the compositions borne off from the suggestions of actuality .
. . Africa inspired the painter and got it into his canvas; and that is just the essence of charm in the
incantations of our charmer.” Wolff, 65, 67. Fromentin wrote of Algeria in terms similar to those used by
Weeks: “Le silence est un des charmes les plus subtils de ce pays solitaire et vide . . . On croit qu’il
représente l’absence du bruit, comme l‘obscurité représente l’absence de la lumière; c’est une erreur . .
.[c’est] plutôt une sorte de transparence aérienne (p.54);" "Une remarque de peintre . . . c’est qu’à
l’inverse de ce qu’on voit en Europe, ici les tableaux se composent dans l’ombre avec un centre obscur et
des cours de lumière. C’est, en quelque sorte, du Rembrandt transposé; rien n’est plus mystérieux" (p.
106); "On ne connaît pas en France l’effet de cette solitude et de ce silence sous le plus beau soleil qui
puisse éclairer le monde . . . . Ici, le soleil de mide consterne, mortifie, et c’est l’ombre de minuit qui
répare et à son tour redonne la vie" (p. 162). Quoted in Elwood Hartman, Three Nineteenth-century
French Writer/Artists and the Maghreb: the literary and artistic depictions of North Africa by Théophile
Gautier, Eugène Fromentin and Pierre Loti (Tügingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1994), 46, 54, 106, 162.
94. Fromentin described a fantasia: " 'Imagine,' he says, 'that which can never be revived in these notes,
cold as they are in form and halting in phrase; imagine the most impetuous disorder, the most
inconceivable swiftness, the utmost radiance of crude color touched by sunshine; picture the gleam of
arms . . . vivid reds, fiery orange, cold whites, inundated by the grays of the sky . . .' ," M. Louis Gonse,
Eugène Fromentin: Painter and Writer, trans. Mary Caroline Robbins (Boston: James R. Osgood and
Company, 1883), 80.

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proportionality, punctuations of red color, and sense of vast openness. The skies are agitated and

clouds scumbled; the brushwork is roughened and textural. Both paintings are bisected

horizontally just below the midpoint; a local dignitary, marked by vivid red, views the tumult

from nearly the exact spot on the left horizon line; a diagonal leads from this vantage point

completely across the picture, terminating at the same point in the right foreground.

However, these formal correspondences belie the true affinity, the shared point of view of

North Africa as vital, limitless, ennobled by history as it is unconstrained by modernity. These

paintings rely less on staged, authenticating details than on attentive observation grounded in

personal experience, and a desire to translate that emotion, excitement and physical immediacy

to the viewer. Memories and imagination conspire to romanticize that experience, but the result

is more than reverie. It is a reimagining of the Orient, a recasting of its place in the minds of

Western audiences.

And yet, no matter how Edwin Weeks may have strived to share with Western viewers his

captivating experiences in Morocco and the vitality of its culture, however carefully he may have

avoided depicting its inhabitants as treacherous militants, indirect collaboration with French

hegemonic designs proved unavoidable. This collaboration rested not so much on the subject of

the paintings but on the context of the retelling of the artist's travels in Morocco. By themselves,

the paintings were only a part of the story.

Shortly after the close of the 1881 Salon, beginning in October Weeks exhibited thirty

works at the salle des dépêches or public gallery space of the conservative but widely circulated

daily newspaper, Le Gaulois. Prompted by the exhibition, Le Gaulois and French periodicals

such as the literary and artistic weekly La Vie Moderne wrote about Weeks' travels in North

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Africa in terms that amplified French political self-interest. Weeks had to be extraordinarily

courageous to face the daily perils of existence in a region replete with threats (real and

imagined) from rebellious tribes, religious fanatics and mismanaged economies—that is, a region

desperately in need of the French civilizing mission. In the pages of Le Gaulois Edwin Weeks

was cast as the artist-adventurer, an intrepid soul whose passion for his subject struck near the

heart of current political affairs, in effect a new kind of free-lance war artist:

Nous ouvrons aujourd’hui, dans notre salle de dépêches, une exposition des
plus intéressantes. M. E.-L. Weeks, artiste amèricain, qui vient d’explorer
l’intèrieur du Maroc, la Tunisie, l’Algérie, et les pays avoisinants, a rapporté de
son voyage une collection d’études très curieuses qu’il a bien voulu nous confier
pour quelques jours.
M. Weeks, qui a pénétré très loin dans les provinces ou l’insurrection a pris
naissance, a pu saisir sur le vif, et souvent au péril de sa vie, des types de guerriers
et de chéfs indigènes.
Il a poussé ses explorations jusqu’á la province de Sus, au pied du Grand-
Atlas où peu d’Européen ont osé pénétrer jusqu’ici.
Cette exposition, d’un intérêt d’actualité saisissant, attirera certainement le
tout-Paris artiste et boulevardier.95

Certainly, Le Gaulois was trying to drum up interest in its exhibition by emphasizing Weeks'

scrapes with death. But, as "the most popular newspaper in army circles," there was clearly a

broader political purpose afoot.96 The newspaper followed the next day with a second article on

the instant success of the exhibition that documented "a country at war":

Le public peut admirer depuis hier, dans notre Salle des Depêches, une
brillante série d’études et de tableaux récemment executés en Tunisie par M.
Weeks, l’excellent peintre américain. Le succès de cette Exposition a été très vif
des la première heure; nous ne doutons qu’il s’accentue et grandisse encore, car

95. "Nous ouvrons aujourd’hui, dans notre salle de dépêches . . .," Le Gaulois 749, 1 Oct. 1881, 1 col. 4.
96. Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris, 1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 110.

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 on y voit tout ensemble de charmantes oeuvres et de sincères documents sur les
pays où se fait la guerre.
M. Weeks est de la race de ces vaillants et consciencieux artistes qui vont
devant eux et plantent leurs chevalets même en plein desert, partout où quelque
chose les frappé.
Tous les sugets sont abords dans ses esquisses: vous y verrez une entrée de
mosquee, un passage de rivière, des cavaliers et des piètons des types originaux,
de vives silhouettes, des paysages brulés par le soleil.
Les plus difficiles connaisseurs sont unanimes [à ?] louer son entente de la
lumière violente de l’Afrique et de l’atmosphere surchauffée qui rayonne autour
des édifices et des figures. Ils loueront aussi la scrupuleuse vérité des attitudes et
des physionomies arabes produits par le peintre, la correction de son dessin et
l’harmonie de sa couleur. Sa facture est légère et facile, imprévue et spirituelle.
Tout le monde aura plaisir et profit, en somme, a venir regarder ses toiles.97

Taking up where Le Gaulois left off, the November 19, 1881 issue of La Vie Moderne

devoted a double-page spread, "Les Peintres Explorateurs: Edwin Lord Weeks," to the artist's

last two trips to Morocco (Figures 4-16, 4-17, 4-18). Recognizing Weeks as an artist of

"prominent reputation in America" the article described how, after months of harrowing

experiences in Rabat during the height of the famine, the following year Weeks returned

undaunted to push farther into the treacherous Moroccan interior. Building on S.G.W.

Benjamin's already dramatic account of Weeks' Moroccan experiences in his just-published book

Our American Artists, aimed at the youthful reader, La Vie Moderne ratcheted up the rhetoric:

Après avoir traversé un pays absolument désert et infesté par les tribus
insoumises, qui tentèrent d'attaquer son escorte à plusiers reprises et qui
l'obligèrent de se tenir continuellement sur le qui-vive, il arriva à Maroc. . .
Maroc a toujours eu la mauvaise renommée d'être la ville la plus fanatique de
ce pays. Les amis de M. Weeks lui avaient conseillé de ne pas entreprendre ce

97. “Notre Exposition,” Le Gaulois, 2 Oct. 1881, 1 col. 3. The references in these two articles to Tunisia
and Algeria are all the documentation available concerning Weeks' travels in those countries.

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 voyage à cause des périls nombreux et de l'impossibilité d'y faire aucune étude,
par suite du caractère ombrageux et fanatique des habitants.98

The perils of the journey guaranteed the veracity of the vision; the powers of the press recast that

vision to suit audience expectations of a "country at war."

Given France’s long engagement in North Africa, its clearly hegemonic designs on

Morocco, and the well-publicized American suspicions of French colonial motives, the French

press might well have been captious and dismissive towards American portrayals of the region.

On the contrary, Parisian critics invested Weeks’ images of Morocco with unusual gravitas.

Edwin Lord Weeks' North African scenes, cast in the context and terms of France's colonial

entanglements, established his reputation in Paris as more than just another artist with a penchant

for the exotic East.99

98. B. Mariott, "Les Peintres Explorateurs: Edwin Lord Weeks," La Vie Moderne; journal hebdomadaire,
19 November 1881, 749–50.
99. "C'est de ces voyages remplis d'aventures nombreuses que M. Weeks a rapporté ces études
intéressantes et ces curieuses esquisses qui ont commencé à fonder sa réputation à Paris et lui ont valu
notre attention." Mariott, 749.

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 Chapter Five

Weeks and the French Visualization of India

From the early 1880s, as Edwin Lord Weeks' career advanced his geographical focus

shifted from North Africa to India, but his profound interest in Eastern culture never wavered.

The passion that he developed in Morocco for architecture and scenes of everyday life—from

dusty, balking camels to intricately carved, weatherbeaten door frames—only intensified as he

traveled through India. Weeks' paintings of India, inspired by both French and British sources,

demonstrate his especially keen interest in the monumental architecture of the Mughal period.

These enduring symbols of strength, visible testaments to political power and the richness of

local culture, thematically unify many of Edwin Lord Weeks' brilliantly-hued paintings of the

region.

Despite Weeks' use of photography to help capture views and to lend a sense of

immediacy to the grand Indian panorama, that vital immediacy never directly bridges to

contemporary social or political concerns, no matter how dire, obvious or compelling. It is a

selective, often ennobled, dream-like vision of the East, where the realities of the colonial

present seldom encroach on the splendors of the imperial past. Regardless of their verist

qualities, many of Weeks' paintings of India exist in a reverie that merges past and present

without fully engaging either.

This romantic attitude distinguishes Edwin Weeks from the French artists usually

associated with him, namely Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon Gérôme, as well as from the long

British artistic visualization of India, discussed in the next chapter. It also sets him apart from

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those contemporaries, mainly French, whose popular images of "the East" were often visual

forays into violence, salacity and cultural torpidity. However, this attitude did not apply to all

French painters of North Africa and the Levant, nor did it apply generally to French artists'

interpretations of India. French paintings of India broadly align with an alternate strain of

French Orientalism exemplified by Eugène Fromentin's medievalist, idealizing meditations on

Algeria (The Heron Hunt, Figure 5-1). For some critics Weeks recalled not Gérôme's precisely-

rendered fantasies of sex, violence, piety and subjugation, but rather Fromentin's translation of

vast spaces and the cultural vitality and agency of the pre-colonial era. In this context Weeks'

paintings of India are in agreement with, and may be viewed as a continuation of, both the

interpretations of Fromentin and the French visualization of India.

For most of the nineteenth century the French tended to embroider their images of India

with lively romantic fantasy, in parallel to their nation's underlying political interest in viewing

India as noble but oppressed. In contrast, tempered by the realities of administering a distant

colony and restive population, British artists throughout the Victorian era were almost

universally wedded to envisioning India in the more static terms of the Picturesque. British

artists' deep allegiance to these eighteenth-century artistic conventions visually suspended India

in a static, controllable, pre-Rebellion state. Nonetheless, echoes of the British Picturesque

emerge in Weeks' paintings through his interest in the work of Scottish artist and architect James

Fergusson and through the influence of readily available commercial photographs and albums of

India, both later nineteenth-century manifestations of the Picturesque.

Edwin Lord Weeks' paintings of India are best understood as distillations of both the

French and British traditions, filtered through the experiences of a sophisticated, often skeptical

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American and realized in terms that engaged contemporaneous transatlantic artistic concerns.

Because they were produced at the intersection of multiple cultures, Weeks' paintings of India

stand apart from, even as they are a part of, the American, British and French national schools.

To locate this intersection requires a consideration of the visual legacy crafted by the British and

the French, a legacy well in place long before the American Edwin Weeks first ventured to India

in 1882.

Engaging the French Tradition

For strategic reasons France had been keenly interested in India since the seventeenth

century. Through the French East India Company, established to keep up with trading rivals set

up by the Dutch and British, France had targeted India for various commercial enterprises,

colonizing efforts and associated political intrigues. However, in the mid-eighteenth century

French ambitions were dealt a terminal blow by Robert Clive, who secured for the British control

over Bengal in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Thereafter, France's territorial interests were

restricted to a handful of trading posts on the Coromandel Coast (Pondicherry, Karikal and

Yanaon), one on the Malabar Coast (Mahé) and Chandannagar in Bengal.

Shielded by distance and liberated from the practical responsibilities of governance, the

French had considerable psychological latitude in their imaginings of India. Though long a

stalwart of British artistic visions of India, the Picturesque failed to cross the channel to steer

French interpretations of the region. Regarding India, French colonial psychology simply never

aligned with the formulaic rules and constraints of the Picturesque. Unlike the British, French

artists had no reason to fit India into an aesthetic ideal that flirted with the rough and the strange

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only to fit them into a prescribed formula, as if India were a slightly more exotic version of the

Lake District.

Rather, to visualize India as vital, mutable and somewhat ungovernable fit much more

comfortably into the French fantasy. It explained why France had not conquered India, why

Britain managed it poorly, and gave sustained hope for the eventual utter failure of Britain's

colonial enterprise. In consequence, a mythical, romanticized image of India arose in France

over the course of the nineteenth century. As Amina Okada, curator of the Musée National des

Arts Asiatiques Guimet in Paris, noted:

La réalité indienne s’estompait ainsi au profit d’une vision idéalisée de l’Inde, où

l’imaginaire avait la part belle, où le mythe avait bien souvent valeur de dogme,
où le rêve l’emportait volontiers sur le réel.1

Despite, or perhaps because of, the dashed hopes for a French colonial empire in India,

the subject simmered on a low burn in the French artistic imagination. Among the earlier French

images of India are those of Eugène Delacroix, the most expressive of French Romantics, who

filled pages of sketchbooks with prancing Indian cavaliers inspired by Count Alexis Soltykoff's

illustrated Voyages dans l'Inde.2 In the same high spirit is the 1851 La Chasse du Rajah (Figure

5-2) by painter, illustrator and inveterate traveler Évremond de Bérard (1824-81), which gave

full rein to the theatricality underlying this mythical vision. Under the pale golden sky in La

1. Amina Okada, L’Inde du XIXe Siècle, voyage aud sources de l’imaginaire (Marseille: AGEP Editeur,
1991), 7.
2. Okada, 10-13. Regarding Alexei Dmitriyevich Soltykov (b. 1806), other spellings include: Saltykow,
Soltikoff and Saltuikov. In 1849 he published a selection of his letters in French accompanied by his
drawings, which became very well known in Europe. Lettres sur l’Inde, (Paris: Amyot, 1848). In 1851
the book was translated into Russian and became an instant success; the drawings were published
separately in London in 1859 as "Drawings on the Spot."

187
Chasse, dozens of turbaned, bare-chested, lance-wielding hunters, atop a troop of quite

determined-looking elephants, encircle a tiger. Ignoring the lances and arrows that dangle from

his body, the tiger lunges at his stalkers. In the dark foreground two bloody combatants, a hunter

and another tiger, lay side by side on the gray dirt, having met a common end.3

To seize briefly on this theme for purposes of comparison, in British depictions of Indian

hunts the tiger (long an Indian symbol of strength and royal power) had a much diminished

chance of survival. Throughout the nineteenth century, tiger-hunting was a popular theme in

British depictions of India, but to find such a lively portrayal of a similar scene in British art one

would have to reach back to Tiger Hunting in the East Indies (c.1800, Figure 5-3) by the

German-born Johan Zoffany (1733–1810). Yet even here Zoffany arranged the tiger, the

elephants, the Indians, the landscape and British officers commanding the action such that the

outcome is not in doubt. The symbolic tiger is no match for the superior organization and

firepower of the British, a lesson again presented in The Tiger at Bay (Figure 5-4), from Thomas

Williamson's Oriental Field Sports (1808).4 Even less mystery attaches to The Prince of Wales

Tiger Shooting with Sir Jung Bahadoor: the Critical Moment (Figure 5-5), from the Illustrated

London News of March 25, 1876 (a reprise of an 1836 engraving by Thomas Landseer, The

Shoot.) The British were not about to let the Indian tiger win, even in a painting.

3. Lion and tiger hunts were popular themes in the nineteenth century, and of course held many more
meanings than those alluded to above. For example, Delacroix's series on the subject may be viewed as a
struggle between man and the destructive forces of nature. Eve Twose Kilman, "Delacroix's Lions and
Tigers: A Link between Man and Nature," Art Bulletin 64, no. 3 (Sep. 1982): 446–66.
4. Thomas Williamson, Oriental Field Sports (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1808).

188
 As the cold realities of governing a distant population seeped from commerce to politics

to art, British artists responded by restricting their visions of India, what it once was and what it

could be. After the Indian rebellion of 1857, although a number of British artists visited India

they continually depicted it in formulaic eighteenth-century terms, discussed more fully in the

following chapter. However, no such practicalities intruded on the French visual imagination, as

two paintings by Charles-Emile Vacher de Tournamine (1812–1872) suggest.5 Chasse Indienne

(Figure 5-6) of 1868 (another hunting scene, apparently very popular with the French) again

features the luminous golden sky and the requisite pachyderms. Bows now augment the lances;

dead deer or other ruminants are slung across the elephant saddles; feisty hounds chase low-

flying tropical birds. In the far distance, just above the dense palm groves emerge the shadowed

tops of unknown temples. Indian hunters on sprightly white mounts, smartly turbaned and

colorfully robed, direct the hunting party. No British officers needed, only the free, noble,

medievalising essence of Fromentin's The Heron Hunt.

It appears that those same horsemen, bows still at the ready, rode straight from the

Chasse Indienne into Une fête dans l’Inde—Lac Sacré d'Oudeypour (1870; Figure 5-7), a work

by the same artist. In this lively scene, tasseled crimson howdahs complement the riders'

splendid wardrobes. The whole party enjoys a promenade though the shallows of the sacred

lake, with the stark white, ornately carved temple in the background, etched against a pure azure

sky. Richly jeweled saddle blankets, turbans of red, white, yellow, blue and pink carry hints of

glimmering chivalry, of the European medieval seigneur, of the fabulous in the fact. Moved by a

5. Okada, 16.

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similar poetical spirit, decades later Weeks described his visit to the sacred lake:

A long perspective of white palaces, with many domes and oriel-windows, with
solid masses of dark foliage rising from the water here and there, reaches to the
great supporting walls of the Rana's castle, and at this point the lake opens out
into greater width; its horizon of gardens and hills beyond is interrupted only by
the fantastic silhouettes of the island palaces, which seem to float between water
and sky; it is as if the elusive mirages which we had so often seen on our way
across the white salt deserts of Persia, and which had always melted into thin air,
had at last become materialized here.6

Two of Weeks' illustrations of the same locale, Castle of the Ranas of Oudeypore and

Elephants Drinking—Pichola Lake (Figures 5-8, 5-9), attest to the Rajputs' impressive bearing

painted decades earlier by Tournemine.7 Weeks observed: "When arrayed in his court dress, and

mounted on his horse caparisoned with corresponding splendor, the Rajpoot noble is at his best,

and in the full glare of sunlight he is decorative to a dazzling degree."8 Lamenting the sartorial

shortcomings of the West, Weeks found the most well turned-out "dude" but a "crude and

unfinished production" by comparison. In typical fashion, Weeks was quick to point out

misleading Western prejudices. Decorative did not mean incapable: "Notwithstanding the

bejewelled daintness of their attire . . . many of them are experts with a boar spear or an express

rifle." 9 Similar images of splendid bearing and active competence abound in paintings by

Weeks, but are virtually absent from British depictions of Indian life.

6. Weeks, From the Black Sea, 270–71.

7. Reproduced in Weeks, From the Black Sea, 275 and 261; Weeks, "Oudeypore, the City of the
Sunrise," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 90, no. 587 (1895): 435-56, at 441 and 447.
8. Weeks, From the Black Sea, 285.
9. Weeks, From the Black Sea, 289.

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The Influence of Louis Rousselet

Perhaps the most profound impact on the nineteenth-century French visualization of India

were the photographs and books of Marie Théophile Louis Rousselet (1845–1929), a close

contemporary of Weeks. Rousselet traveled extensively throughout India in the years 1863–68.

His photographs were published by Goupil et Cie of Paris in a two volume set of 160 mounted

albumen prints, Voyage dan L'Inde de M. L. Rousselet.10 This was followed in 1875 by

Rousselet's book, with 317 engravings, L’Inde des Rajahs, Voyage dans l'Inde centrale et dans

les présidences de Bombay et du Bengale, published in translation in Britain and America in

1876 as India and Its Native Princes.11 It is very possible that the reproductions in Rousselet's

book were the ones that Edwin Weeks was referring to when he wrote from Paris in December of

1879 to Alexander Twombly about his Moroccan excursion to the "ruined city of Shela" with its

"with grand old gateway of carved stone, like things I have seen in photographs of India"

(Figures 5-10, 5-11).12

Rousselet published to raves in Britain, despite his continental perspective. Though the

translation had been in production for a while, its well-timed release coincided with the Prince of

Wales' visit to India in 1875–76, with a note on the title page "Dedicated by express permission

to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales." The prince purchased fifty copies of the book to use as

10. Hélène Lafont-Couturier and Pierre-Lin Renié, L'Inde: Photographies de Louis Rousselet, 1865-1868
(Bordeaux: Musée Goupil, 1992).
11. Louis Rousselet, India and Its Native Princes, trans. Charles Randolph Buckle (London: Chapman
and Hall; New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1876).
12. Weeks to Alexander Twombly, Paris, 10 December 1879.

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presentation volumes to Indian rulers. In a rapturous review of the “truly superb" volume,

London's Art Journal acclaimed its

. . . marvelous structures, its singular scenery, and its picturesque people. As

engravings they have not been surpassed . . . It is a volume perfect in all respects,
which thoroughly brings before us a country that is almost a world—deeply
interesting to all nations, but more especially to England.13

The progressive Westminster Review welcomed Rousselet's refreshingly independent point of

view:

. . . is of much value as the best existing popular description of the large portion of
India through which he travelled . . . We recognize throughout the advantage of
the French traveller’s having brought ‘a fresh mind and independent ideas to bear
on his subject, free from any preconceived bias or prejudice.’ The exceeding
fidelity of his picture can be thoroughly apparent only to those who have been in
India . . . 14

Not to be outdone by the Westminster Review, The Academy polished its compliments of

Rousselet with a swipe at the calculated taxonomic preoccupations of British ethnologists.

As far as The Academy was concerned, when it came to describing India, being French—or at

least not being British—bestowed a critical advantage:

We must commend the editors for having required of the artists—I count fourteen
contributors to the book, all of more or less eminence—to confine themselves to
the literal rendering of the documents entrusted to them, instead of allowing them,
as was the custom until very lately, to arrange scenes which set at defiance the
bearing, habits, passions, prejudices peculiar to each race, to each people,

13. "India and Its Native Princes," Art Journal, n.s. 2 (1876): 145. However, some reviewers expressed
reservations, particularly regarding the appropriateness of the books as gifts to Indian rulers. The subject
of one illustration, the Prince of Wales' attendance at a brutal elephant fight, was greeted by one reviewer
with “unmitigated disgust” and deemed hardly the proper royal image or example. Other detractors found
particularly offensive the “elephant executioner crushing the skull of a prostrate criminal”—a scene
worthy of Gérôme.
14. “Rousselet’s Travels in India,” Westminster Review (American edition) 105 (1876): 187–204, at 187.

192
 according to the degree of latitude, climate, origin, and contact with European
civilisation. Here, then, is the proof of what I said at the beginning of my letter,
that there is a higher average of critical sense in France.15

The French could not have agreed more. There, Rousselet's works were considered the

most thorough and most up-to-date commentary on British India. Finding common ground with

the Westminster Review and The Academy, French writers dismissed the English as too close to

the situation to gain proper perspective on the country and its peoples. The Revue archéologique

called Rousselet's work the most serious on India since that of early nineteenth-century biologist

and geologist Victor Jaquemont.16 The illustrations were appreciated for their absolute accuracy

and for their scientific value, a characteristic that impressed many in Britain as well, including

Sir Richard Burton.17

L’Inde des Rajahs was published not long after Edwin Lord Weeks arrived in Paris in

1874 to further his professional training. Although it is not known exactly when Weeks

encountered the works of Rousselet, it is certain that he did and that Rousselet's vision of India

made a deep and lasting impression on him as may be seen through a number of Weeks' texts and

15. Ph. Burty, "French Christmas Books," Academy 7 (2 Jan. 1875): 21–22, at 22.
16. “Le livre de M. Rousselet est peut-être ce que, depuis Jacquemont, on a écrit en France de plus
sérieux sur l’Inde,” and “ . . . il a pu juger la situation du pays, les idées et le caractêre des indigènes,
l’adminstration et la politique de l’Angleterre dans l’Inde, avec une liberté d’esprit qu’un Anglais, trop
intéresée dans la question, aurait difficilement conservée dans toute cette étude.” He also found
Rousselet's images believable: “Rien ici de donné à l’invention, à l’à peu près; chacune de ces
illustrations traduit soit une photographie, soit un croquis fait sur les lieux mêmes par un vif et sincère
crayon.” G. Perrot, “Bibliogaphie," Revue archéologique, n.s. 29 (Jan.–June 1875): 268–71, at 268.
17. Burton was considerably interested in Rousselet's illustration of the naked miners of Pannah. Richard
F. Burton, “The Nizam Diamond—The Diamond in India,” Quarterly Journal of Science and Annals of
Mining, Metallurgy, Engineering . . ., n.s. 6 (Jan. 1876): 351–60, at 356.

193
paintings. For example, in his article for Harper's Magazine, "Oudeypore, the City of the

Sunrise" (and in its slightly revised version published as a chapter of Weeks' 1895 From the

Black Sea through Persia to India), the author relied on Rousselet for topographical information,

quoted him directly concerning architectural decoration, and included a full page excerpted from

Rousselet's concise geneology of the Rajputs given in L’Inde des Rajahs. Elsewhere, sections of

Weeks' text track Rousselet very closely, though usually without citation.18

Edwin Weeks' representations of India reveal visual as well as textual correspondences

with Rousselet. One striking example is found in a comparison of Weeks' illustration of the

Castle of the Ranas of Oudeypore (Figure 5-8) with Rousselet's The Great Entrance of the

Palace of Oudeypore (Figure 5-12).19 Similarly, the upper left section of Week's illustration of

the Palace of the Maharajah of Gwalior, Scindia (Figure 5-13) precisely mirrors the cropping

and perspective of Rousselet's image The King Pal Palace, Gwalior (Figure 5-14). In a third

example, the top and right borders of Weeks' painting (Indian Horsemen at the) Gateway of

Alah-ou-din, Old Delhi (n.d.; Figure 5-15) correspond closely to the Rousselet's cropped

photograph La porte d'Ala-Oudïn (1868; Figure 5-16).20

18. Weeks, From the Black Sea, 278, 281, 289–90 reproduced earlier in Weeks, "Oudeypore, the City of
the Sunrise." Elsewhere, Weeks' paraphrasing tracks Rousselet very closely, though without direct
citation. Compare, for example, Weeks' description of a rider's dress and accoutrements on page 286 of
From the Black Sea with Rousselet's Native Princes, page 150.
19. Castle of the Ranas of Oudeypore in Weeks, From the Black Sea, 261; The Great Entrance in
Rousselet, Native Princes, 160 (opposite page). The central figure in Castle is quite similar to that in
Weeks' oil painting, Indian Prince and Parade Ceremony.
20. The Palace of the Maharajah illustration appears in Weeks' From the Black Sea, 247. The King Pal
Palace may be found in Rousselet, Native Princes, 302. La porte d'Ala-Oudïn is reproduced in Musée
Goupil-Bordeaux, l'Inde Photographies de Louis Rousselet 1865-1868 (Bordeaux: Musée Goupil, 1992),

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 Other correspondences suggest a similar conclusion, that Weeks quoted selectively from

both Rousselet's literary and visual records of his travels through India. The architectural

ornament highlighted in Weeks' The Fort of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh (Figure 5-17) is just that

captured by Rousselet's Side View of the Pal Palace, at Gwalior (Figure 5-18). One of Weeks'

most famous works, The Golden Temple, Amritsar (c. 1890; Figure 5-19) is presented from the

exact angle of Rousselet's illustration, Temple at Umritsur, and Lake of Immortality (Figure

5-20).

Rousselet's impressions of India retained their currency even in 1890s Paris, although by

this point it was all too apparent that France's claims on India were forever out of reach.

Nevertheless, for the French India remained "that country of astonishing enchantment."21 French

political opportunities had evaporated, but France's intellectual claims endured. Indeed, they

escalated. France may not have controlled India but, at least in the minds of French intellectuals,

she understood India better than the British ever did or ever would.22

For the French, subordinate colonizers with a handful of trading outposts, to view India

as culturally stagnant served no political, social or economic purpose.23 In fact, it was quite the

opposite. France had everything to gain by believing that the people of India were not only

166.
21. India was described as “le pays des féeries étonnantes” in “Vereschagin," Le Figaro Supplément
Littéraire du Dimanche no. 52 (28 Dec 1879): 229, col. 6.
22. For a vivid example of this point of view from one of Weeks' contemporaries, see Gustave Le Bon,
"Ethnographie: L'Inde Moderne," Revue Scientifique no. 21 (20 Nov. 1886): 648–57.
23. For more on this theme and a discussion of the "psychological colonization" of India, see Jyoti
Mohan, "Claiming India: French Scholars and the Preoccupation with India during the Nineteenth
Century" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 2010), 1–20.

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wrongly oppressed, but that India was capable of making its own progressive strides without the

overbearing "guidance" of Britain. If France had lost the greatest colonial prize in Asia, the salve

to French pride was to dominate India intellectually, to create a vicarious empire that rested on

superior knowledge, penetrating cultural and historical analysis. The resultant view of India,

constructed around French concerns, was not consistent with the British view of India as a

fractious country in need of firm guidance. French Indology was shaped by loss and the need to

recapture the possibilities of the past and the glory of what might have been.24

Consequently, the study of India took overlapping but divergent paths in Britain and

France, steered often by opposing political and commercial agendas. Entangled in the competing

national projects of either re-imagining an India hopelessly lost or governing an India

precariously acquired was the perplexing matter of Indo-European racial relations. For,

according to Victorian pronouncements on the hierarchy of races, the Indian people were the

identifiable, if down-at-heel, cousins of the French and the British.

This understanding matured over decades. In the nineteenth century, the foundation of

European Indological studies rested on comparative philology, specifically the linguistic

24. Mohan, 23–31. See also Joan Leopold: "Moreover, the linkage between Indo-European language,
culture and race was from the 1830s no longer largely restricted to the past. Comparative philologists
with an Idealist emphasis upon common language and mentality as the key to common ethnic origin and
an exaggerated estimate of the continuity of Indo-European language, culture and thought from 2000 B.C
to their own time, held that modern Indo-European language speakers were in some sense the direct
descendants of ancient ones. From 1850–70 perhaps the majority of comparative philologists accepted
the principle that in the classification of contemporary human 'races' linguistic criteria were the most
reliable and should supercede as yet scarcely formularized ethnological criteria such as hair, eye and
cuticle colour or cranial and skeletal measurement." Joan Leopold, "British Applications of the Aryan
Theory of Race to India, 1850–1870," English Historical Review 89, no. 352 (July 1974): 578–603, at
579.

196
affinities identified among classical Greek, Latin, the Germanic languages and Sanskrit. Many

philologists were convinced that Indic and Hebraic texts had contributed substantially to ancient

Greek civilization.25 The unsettling but hard to sidestep conclusion was the radical idea of an

ancient Indo-European "Aryan" civilization (from the Sanskrit ārya, noble), a proposition that

upended conventional Western interpretations of global history.26 In the Victorian era the terms

"Aryan" and "Aryan race" became commonplace referents for the descendants of the original

speakers of the Aryan languages. That is, they referred to the inhabitants of Europe and,

problematically and controversially, India.

In the later decades of the nineteenth century linguistics was linked with ethnology and

the emerging science of anthropology, igniting furious debates on race, progress, civilization,

history, human potential and cultural superiority. These ideas were insistently topical and

invariably contentious. Serious proposals to address them, both intellectual and practical, had

sweeping domestic and international implications for the European colonial powers.

25. Mohan, 164.

26. "The work of Sir William Jones and his contemporaries—the translations into various European
languages the Rig Veda and other texts—demonstrated the fundamental realtionship between Greek, Latin
and Sanskrit that demanded a new comparative vision of history that insisted on a common Indo-
European cultural heritage. . . . this common heritage was welded onto a Vedic framework by a later
generation of scholars, most notably Friedrich Max Müller . . . whose Company-sponsored translation of
the Vedas (six volumes, 1849–74) marked a pivotal point in the reconfiguration of understandings of
religion and ancient history, was the most influential popularizer of 'Aryanism'. His work, which reached
a large popular audience in Britain and its colonies, depicted the Vedas as the foundational source for the
study of 'civilization' and made the term 'Aryan' an indispensable part of the analytical vocabulary of late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ethnology and history." Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race:
Aryanism in the British Empire (New York and Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Publishers Ltd., 2002), 5–6.

197
 So, in Edwin Lord Weeks' time, to engage seriously the culture of India was more than a

foray into the exotic; it was to wade into a raging debate on history and ideology that carried

immediate political implications. These disparate currents of thought formed the backdrop for

the reception of Edwin Weeks' images of India in the fashionable galleries of late nineteenth-

century London and Paris. Arguably, as politics and scholarly debate inevitably shaped the

works of informed artists, so in turn did their paintings become a part of the broader discussion.

In the nineteenth century the boundaries between artist, writer and scholar were more

permeable. The French writer and photographer Louis Rousselet, for example, was held in high

regard as a noted anthropologist; he published essays on India in Revue d'Anthropologie and was

appointed a permanent member of the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris. He characterized the

peoples he encountered in the various communities of India in terms of race, as Aryan, Turanian

or Dravidian, although he refrained from attaching labels indicative of developmental superiority

or potential.27 Despite a late-Victorian wave of pseudo-scientific theories that popularized the

notion of racial categorizations based on "types" derived from anthropometric formulae,28 Weeks'

27. Rousselet was far more neutral in tone that other French theorists such as Arthur de Gobineau, whose
Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (1884) proposed that the downfall of Indian civilization was a
direct result of miscegenation, the dilution of the original Aryan stock. Prolonged intermixing of
ethnicities so diluted the vigor of the Aryan population that it fell prey to successive invaders, including
the English. Weakened over centuries, Gobineau predicted that India could never regain its former
strength. Mohan, 205.
28. For more on this topic, see Elizabeth Edwards, ed., Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920 (New
Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1992); Mary Cowling, The Artist as Anthropologist: The
Representation of Type and Character in Victorian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late
Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1994); and Christopher
Pinney, Photography and Anthropology (London: Reaktion Books, 2011).

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writings and paintings retained a more neutral tone consistent with that presented in the 1870s by

Rousselet in India and Its Native Princes.

French Enthusiasm, British Ennui

Though Weeks' interpretations seem to have adhered to the spirit of Rousselet, at the time

Weeks was traveling and painting scenes of Indian culture, current in European intellectual

circles was French sociologist Gustave Le Bon's comprehensive Les Civilisations de l'Inde

(1887), a highly influential 743-page book with over 350 reproductions of photographs, drawings

and maps.29 In chapters such as "Origine et classification des races de l'Inde" and "Races de

l'Inde septentrionale ou Hindoustan" Le Bon embraced prevailing theories of hierarchical racial

categorizations. Although Le Bon was primarily interested in defining race in terms of

psychological characteristics, he backed up his views with illustrations typical of the

ethnographically-driven photography of the time: front, side and three-quarter views of the

human body and staged poses that demonstrated occupations and the use of common

implements. (He was, after all the inventor of the pocket cephalometer.)

Le Bon's work was considered a reliable reference on historical and contemporary India,

cited as authority on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in prominent journals such as Revue

29. Gustave Le Bon, Les Civilisations de l'Inde (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1887). Le Bon
believed it to be only a matter of time before the English lost power in India: "que les plus funestes
ennemis des Anglais dans l'Inde sont précisément les Anglais eux-mêmes." Le Bon, “Ethnographie:
L’Inde Moderne,” 657.

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Scientifique and in various English language periodicals.30 His texts would have been nearly

inescapable to the professional or amateur Indologist, especially one like Edwin Weeks, a long-

time Paris resident at the height of his career when Les Civilisations de l'Inde was published.

Interestingly, Weeks did not mention Le Bon in any of his writings. Though obvious formal

similarities unite the works of Rousselet and Weeks, none of Le Bon's images call to mind any of

Weeks' representations of India. As Weeks often cited sources he respected, a reasonable

conclusion is that Weeks found little in Le Bon to add to his own interpretations of Indian

culture.

An apparent disinterest in Le Bon is not to say that Weeks was not steeped in the

nineteenth-century preoccupation with racial classifications and hierarchies. Like many of his

contemporaries, Weeks used the term "race" broadly and in a variety of contexts.31 He was

30. Mohan, 214–15.

31. The concept of "race" was interwoven throughout Weeks' From the Black Sea: “crooned to himself
with the wailing cadences of his race” (14); "this strange gathering place of races" (73); “to chronicle
deeds which, if performed by another race and in another age” (93); "often applied to all races from India
to Morocco" (140); “dense mass of brown and yellow humanity in which every race of India might seem
to be represented” (143); “they are lighter in color than any race of India” (150); “originally a military
race” (152); “not only a different race, but a different specie of the human animal” (153); “of Mongolian
race” (153); “the elastic and supple attitudes of his race” (158); “the more modern race seems to have
inherited the taste of the older one” (190); “of whatever race or nation” (196); “the hereditary stamp of his
race” (226); “some physiological peculiarity of the race” (238); “each race has left traces of its
occupancy” (248); “the higher Rajpoot race” and “the leading race characteristics” (287); “the governing
race” and “the whole Rajpoot race” (288); “the ‘hoary antiquity’ of the race” (292); "the English-speaking
races", "the conquered races" and "the warlike races of India" (306); “by artisans of the same race as the
original builders” and “ men of an alien race” (308); “artisans of Hindoo or Jaina race” (329); “he
belonged to a race remarkable for keen intelligence,” “a more cultivated race than their conquerors” and
“the work of a widely different race” (332); “the conventional dress of their race or order” and “clinging
drapery of her race” (334); "a complete fusion of the two races" (347); "no races of Europe can show"
(350); “this once dashing race of freebooters” (351); "various were the races represented" (354); “the
error of judging a race by rare exceptions” and “showed himself to be far freer from race prejudice”
(362); "monopolized by Western races" (383); "momentary blending, of races" (408); “not unpardonable

200
keenly aware of the theories of Indo-European Aryan civilization that were fundamental to then-

current anthropological and historical assessments of India. He refers more than once to the deep

Indo-European cultural connection, and through that connection recognizes his own genetic

affiliations:

[describing "an itinerant fakir"] Of all the children of Aryan stock he is the most
conservative, unchanged and unchanging; and even in India, where in these days
one is seldom out of hearing of the locomotive whistle, he is an anachronism.

[on decoration of houses in Bikanir] An equally strange and persistent impression

remained that the houses of this remote capital had a certain affinity with our own,
as if some appreciative native had recently visited America and had brought back
with him the idea of the artistic little homes of Boston or Philadelphia . . . . Vacant
wall spaces, as elsewhere, are often stuccoed and made interesting by frescoes
representing the usual rampant elephants and tiger-hunts. One frequently
recurring theme, which shows, in spite of what the Rajpoot nobility may secretly
believe, that we are all of the same Aryan stock, represents a sort of Noah’s ark
riding on a stormy sea of the deepest indigo; on the hurricane-deck are stiffly
seated a company of Bikanir gentlemen, complacently looking down at the
unfortunate beings of lower castes who are vainly struggling with the waves.

The Hindoo globe-trotter takes delight, not altogether free from a spark of malice,
in pointing out the beam in the eyes of other Aryan brothers which has been
thought to exist only in his own. ‘You too have caste,’ said one of the Hindoos at
the Chicago Fair, ‘but your caste is founded on money alone.’32

This last excerpt, a pithy spin on Matthew 7:3, places the Indian traveler on par with the

American as it takes direct aim at Western values and casual hypocrisy. The barb is all the more

in a race where one family” (410); “the amiable characteristics of their race” (412); "contrast of races"
(413); "alien races" and “each race now has its experts and semi-professionals in the cricket-field” (424);
“by people of every race and caste” (426); “adopted by the parent race” and “for the same race prejudice
exists here (432); “of whatever race or caste” (434); “the wretched Pariah, the outcast and scapegoat of
his race” (437).
32. Weeks, From the Black Sea, 376, 236, 356.

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pointed given that the setting is the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where all the world was staged

for American examination and entertainment, an exhibition self-congratulatory but by no means

self-critical.

It was typical of Weeks to see not only the relationships among cultures but also the

chinks in his own armory of Western ideas. Though he never allowed those chinks to develop

into deep fissures, he made a practice of poking at them. American hypocritical attitudes were

fair game, as were British. But by the mid-1890s, when Weeks spoke of America's "Aryan

brothers," few British intellectuals cared to follow the Aryan chain of reasoning to its obvious

conclusion, that British rule of India was unjust.33 In Britain, the parameters of the Aryan theory

were firmly set in the service of empire.

Justification of imperialism was not the only factor delimiting British Indology. In the

same year that Louis Rousselet's profusely illustrated L'Inde des Rajahs reignited French

scientific and artistic interest in India (shortly after Edwin Weeks arrived in Paris), in Britain

jurist and crown advisor on India Sir Henry Maine's Cambridge Rede Lecture on "The Effects of

Observation of India on Modern European Thought" was greeted with a collective yawn. The

tedium of the subject in Britain was all too apparent in contrast to the spirited enthusiasm for

India on the continent.34

33. Leopold, 592–93.

34. Thomas R. Trautman, Aryans and British India (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1997), 1. "In England . . . Indian topics were regarded as the epitome of dullness, while in other
European countries . . . India was regarded as providing the most exciting of new problems, holding out
the promise of new discoveries."

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 That colonial familiarity had bred indifference was regretfully obvious to prominent

London artist Valentine Prinsep, born in Calcutta to a family who had served in India for

generations. Prinsep, commissioned in October 1876 to memorialize the Imperial Assemblage of

Delhi in a painting to be presented to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her assumption of the

title "Empress of India," remarkably described India as "a country artistically unknown."35 After

traveling from rajah to rajah for over a year in India, Prinsep wrote in 1878:

As a field for artists, India has been of late years sadly neglected. While the more
fortunate countries of the East—Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Arabia—have been
frequently depicted, India has remained almost unknown to the painter. Zoffany
and Daniel, both Royal Academicians, in the old time, when the voyage alone to
India was an affair six months or more, thought it worth their while to visit the
unknown land of Hind. Now in six months much of India may be seen, and yet
since the time of these two artists no painter of note has thought it worth his while
to convey to his countrymen an impression of our Eastern empire. The only
painter of eminence who has visited India for the last eighty years has been a
Russian, M. Verestchagine.36

Coming from one of the most successful and pervasively networked artists in London, Val

Prinsep's statement demonstrates just how thoroughly disinterested his colleagues were in the

subject, despite a long history of British artists' engagement with India.

35. Val. C. Prinsep, Imperial India, an artist's journals, 2nd ed. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879), 350.
36. Prinsep, 350. In a footnote, Prinsep adds: "I must except one or two water-colour painters, who were
only landscape sketchers."

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 Chapter Six

Empire of the Imagination: the British Visual Legacy

Regardless of Val Prinsep's observations on the paucity of his contemporaries' interest,

the collective passions of British artists for India charted a singular phenomenon in the history of

art. This was especially true of English landscapists. As Giles Tillotson observed, "in no other

case has the topography of one country been so extensively and systematically depicted by artists

from another."1 The British produced an enormous trove of images of India, mostly cast in a

vision surprisingly pervasive, uniform and long-lasting. The following overview of the sporadic

history and narrow conceptual range of paintings of India executed by British artists reveals how

startlingly novel Edwin Lord Weeks' paintings must have appeared to European audiences.

Inspired by visions of the exotic and driven by prospects of considerable fortune, London

artists of the latter Georgian era who had never step foot south of Bromley shipped off with John

Company for Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. For over a century the visions of India that they

brought back to Europe invariably adhered to familiar formats. The most enduring and pervasive

of these approaches were the prescribed views of the Picturesque. What started out in Britain as

a cultivated pastime, a way to sharpen perception, appreciate the roughness of nature and the

irregularities of architecture, to tinker artistically around the edges of reality, was applied

wholesale to India.

1. Giles Tillotson, The Artificial Empire, The Indian Landscapes of William Hodges (Richmond, Surrey:
Curzon Press, 2000), 59.

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 There were of course exceptions, especially early on. In the eighteenth century, India

was perceived to be a much grander subject that demanded a grander method, especially when it

came to portrait artists whose patrons were frequently wealthy Indian rulers. While resident in

Madras, Tilly Kettle depicted one of his patrons, Muhammad Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot (1749–

95, 94 x 58.3 inches, Figure 6-1), in as close to a dignified swagger as the artist could manage

given the fully robed subject.2 James Wales flattered the Maratha Peshwa with the equally huge

Madhu Rao Narayan, the Maratha Peshwa (1792; 90 x 73 inches, Figure 6-2), in which the

principal subject is seated along with his minister, Nana Fadnavis, as two standing attendants

hold the sword and yak's tail fly-whisk, unmistakable symbols of authority.

For royal portraiture of Indian subjects, the protocols of flattery lingered well into the

mid-nineteenth century. Franz Winterhalter, a favorite portraitist of Queen Victoria, portrayed

the teenage Maharaja Duleep Singh (1854; Figure 6-3)—who had recently relinquished

sovereignty of the Punjab—with considerably more cosmopolitan panache and romantic appeal

than the artist's rather wooden portraits of Princes Albert and Albert Edward.

British administrators and officers of the East India Company were no less eager to

memorialize familial wealth and status, and were equally interested in the possibilities offered by

history painting's staged heroics to record battles valiantly fought, treaties cagily negotiated, and

peoples firmly subjugated. A British artist's lack of personal experience of India was apparently

no bar to producing a grand history painting in a nominally Indian setting. For example,

2. Mildred Archer and Ronald Lightbrown, India Observed: India as viewed by British Artists 1760–
1860 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1982), 32 plate 1.

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Benjamin West (1738–1820) employed a few neoclassical overtones to embellish Shah 'Alam

(Mughal Emperor 1759–1806) conveying the grant of the Diwani to Lord Clive (c. 1818; Figure

6-4), his testament to Clive's victories in Bengal in 1757, no doubt the earliest Anglo-American

depiction of India.

Although the popularity of British history painting waned, its decline hastened by the

upstart Pre-Raphaelite movement, while operative it lent an undeniable grandeur to the

visualization of India. Not surprisingly, the Indian rebellion of 1857 prompted a revival of

interest in grand-scale history painting, with works such as Thomas Jones Barker's The Relief of

Lucknow, 1857 (1859, 108 x 190 inches; Figure 6-5). Relief commemorated the harrowing

defense of the British Residency and the heroic death of Sir Henry Lawrence, with recognizable

portraits of Lawrence's fellow officers, amid thrashed and dying Indians whose bodies lay

scattered around the canvas.3

Aside from these mid-century exceptions, this sweeping, monumental vision of India,

always intermittent, almost completely disappears from British art in the second half of the

nineteenth century. After the sparks of rebellion were extinguished, the responsibilities of

management superceded the mysteries of the exotic. In Britain, the grand concept gave ground

to the more contained narrative, but in India the grand concept vanished. For professional

British artists, India became more pedestrian than provocative, more suited to the modest

ambitions of the Picturesque and the domesticities of genre, with appeal for patrons with tastes

3. The larger version was destroyed in World War II; the smaller version is 41.5 x 71.4 inches. C. A.
Bayly, The Raj: India and the British 1600–1947 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1990), 246–47.

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for the conventional, the morally ordered and the socially controlled. It is this constrained

vision of India that prevailed until upended by Edwin Lord Weeks in the last quarter of the

nineteenth century.

Early British Artists and the Picturesque

The aesthetics of romanticism, grand portraiture and the dramatic possibilities of history

painting influenced British artists' interpretations of India from the mid-eighteenth century

through the first quarter of the nineteenth. But, during roughly the same period a humbler mode

of representation arose in Britain, the "Picturesque," that was to foster an even more enduring

Western visual language of India. The key practitioners of the Indian Picturesque, their

contemporaries and their followers, not only defined India in the British imagination for most of

the Victorian era, they also determined the predominant professional legacy that confronted

Edwin Weeks when he first visited India in the 1880s.

The aims and conventions of the Picturesque were established in the eighteenth century.

They had a penetrating and pervasive impact on British landscape painting, but their applications

to India proved truly tenacious. For over a hundred years few British artists, whether amateur or

professional, were able to resist the temptation to view India in terms of the Picturesque: a broad

landscape that referenced the sublime yet brimmed with textural variety, curious or exotic

details, irregular outlines, all gently spiced with requisite staffage. Drawing on seventeenth-

century landscapists Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Salvator Rosa and Gaspard Dughet, the

signature quality of the Picturesque was an approachable roughness, uninhibited by too careful

an insistence on actuality. The spiky thatch of a cottage roof, a jagged mountain outline, an

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unkempt field, a deteriorating ruin were all employed to useful advantage. To create a scene that

sparked interest and contemplation, a free and fluid hand was laudable, a slavish adherence to

detail was not:

A piece of Palladian architecture may be elegant in the last degree . . . Should we

wish to give it picturesque beauty, we must use the mallet instead of the chissel:
we must beat down one half of it, deface the other, and throw the mutilated
members around in heaps. In short, from a smooth building we must turn it
into a rough ruin.

˙ ˙ ˙
To this it is enough, that the province of the picturesque eye is to survey nature,
not to anatomize matter. It throws its glances around in the broad-cast stile. It
comprehends an extensive tract at each sweep. It examine parts, but never
descends to particles.4

The Picturesque welcomed restrained embellishment in service of a noble ideal. It

rejoiced in the imperfect, jagged edges of life and landscape. It sought out the underlying beauty

of nature, fitted it to a classical taste, and never paid too close attention to the bits that were left

over or broken in the process. It was, in short, a handy artistic tool with which to hammer out an

empire.

Although the Picturesque grew out of an appreciation for mid-seventeenth-century

continental styles, it was an unquestionably British phenomenon. Among the more ardent

promoters of the picturesque ideals was the Reverend William Gilpin (1724–1804), quoted

above, whose Essay on Prints (1768) and Observations on the River Wye and several parts of

South Wales, etc. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770

4. William Gilpin, Three Essays: on Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching
Landscape, 3rd edition (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1808), 7 and 26.

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(1792) extolled the gentlemanly pleasures of domestic travel and sketching expeditions in rural

England.5 Gilpin's work proved exceedingly timely and well-targeted. It dovetailed nicely with

the middle class tourist boom and appealed as well to the sons of the aristocracy, bound for the

Grand Tour. With regard to the topic at hand, its popularity perfectly coincided with the rise of

the East India Company and the expansion of the British Empire in India.6

The East India Company was not a consistent patron of the arts, but as early as 1730 it

had commissioned George Lambert and Samuel Scott for paintings of its settlements to grace the

Court Room at East India House in London. That neither of these British artists had set foot in

India was of no apparent concern.7

5. The rules of the Picturesque were expounded further and applied to landscape gardening and
architecture by Richard Payne Knight (1750–1824) in An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste,
1802); Uvedale Price (1747–1829) in Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared With The Sublime and The
Beautiful (1794); Thomas Johnes (1748-1816) at Hafod House; and John Britton (1771–1857) in The
Beauties of Wiltshire (1801) and Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (1805–14). For a treatment of
Gilpin, Edmund Burke and the philosophical underpinnings of the Picturesque, see Tillotson, 12–27.
6. The conventions of the picturesque were not applied exclusively to India and other regions of the
"East." Wherever British travelers ventured, including destinations in Europe, they sketched and recorded
their travels in accord with the dictates of the Picturesque, an aesthetic norm in Britain at this time. Thus
it is problematic to associate the Picturesque exclusively with an imperialistic point of view. For a fuller
discussion of the Picturesque as the political, see G.H.R. Tillotson, "Indian Architecture and the English
Vision," South Asian Studies 7 (1991): 59–74, reprinted in David Arnold and Peter Robb, Institutions and
Ideologies, A SOAS South Asia Reader (Richmond, Surrey: RoutledgeCurzon, 1993), 120–144; and more
recently in Zahid R. Chaudhary, Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India
(Minneapolis, London: University of Minneapolis Press, 2012), 107-51.
7. Brian Allen, "The East India Company's Settlement Pictures: George Lambert and Samuel Scott," in
Pauline Rohatgi and Pheroza Godrej, ed. Under the Indian Sun: British Landscape Artists (Bombay:
Marg Publications, 1995), 1–6. These images of Fort St. George, Fort William, Bombay, Tellicherry, the
Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena were intended to represent the vast reach of the Company's trade
rather than to be accurate topographical representations.

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 No professional British artist did so for thirty more years. In 1757, London artist Francis

Swain Ward (1736–94) abandoned his lackluster career with the hope of improving his prospects

in the military service of the Company. After a stint of seven years in the Madras Army, armed

with a portfolio of sketches Ward returned to London to resume his former pursuits. His artistic

career fared no better for his absence. All that survives of his work are ten oils that he donated to

the Company prior to returning to India in 1774, among them the serene Mausoleum of Sher

Shah at Sasaram (Bihar) (c. 1772–73; Figure 6-6). These paintings, inspired by classical

landscapes, are the earliest images of India by a professionally-trained artist who had visited the

sub-continent.8

William Hodges, R.A. (1744–97) was the first to travel to India in the capacity of a

professional artist. Hodges had apprenticed under landscapist Richard Wilson (1714–82) and

gained unmatched experience as the expedition artist for Captain James Cook's second voyage to

the South Seas of 1772–75. Under the patronage of Governor-General Warren Hastings, Hodges

arrived in India in 1780, as Fort St. George, Madras came under escalating attacks. Lamenting

that the "opportunities that offer to a painter are few, in a country which is over-run by an active

enemy" after a year he embarked on the first of three tours of northern and eastern India,

attached to either military or diplomatic missions.9 Each of these three excursions had specific

8. Although Ward produced many paintings of India, his collection is lost. Only about a dozen of
Ward's images are known. Pauline Rohatgi, "Preface to a Lost Collection: The Pioneering Art of Francis
Swain Ward," in Rohatgi and Godrej, 31–52.
9. William Hodges, Travels in India during the years 1780, 1781, 1782, and 1783, 2nd ed. (London:
1794), 8.

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objectives. The first was devoted to the topography of the British territory, the second to the

observation of manners, art and customs in the area of Bengal and the third focused on Mughal

sites and history.10

Hodges did not linger at Calcutta. Benefitting from "that liberality and attention to the

arts which has ever characterized" Warren Hastings, Hodges joined the Governor-General and

party on several prolonged tours of the country.11 Occasionally Hodges stayed on for months at

the home of some Company official whom he had befriended along the way, furthering his

introductions into Anglo-Indian society and seeding the ground for future commissions.12

His paintings from this period reveal little of the armed conflict around him. This was

perhaps not so much political editing as a devotion to the sentimentalized, classical landscape

that comported with Joshua Reynolds' freshly delivered lectures on decorum to the Royal

Academy.13 As Hodges' images of the crisp lines and formidable mass of British buildings

project power, vitality and progress, his depictions of Indian architecture, crumbling in poetic

10. Geoff Quilley, "Hodges and India," in Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill, ed., William Hodges, 1744–
1797: the Art of Exploration (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2004), 139.
11. Hodges, Travels in India, 37.
12. Pratapaditya Pal and Vidya Dehejia, From Merchants to Emperors: British Artists and India, 1757–
1930 (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 102.
13. According to Reynolds, the artist must "sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth, in
pursuing the grandeur of his design;" the painter is to "correct nature by herself, her imperfect state by her
more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and
deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect
than any one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures
unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the Ideal Beauty, is
the great leading principle by which works of genius are conducted." Edmund Gosse, ed., The Discourses
of Sir Joshua Reynolds (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1884), 36 (Discourse III, December 14,
1770) and 50 (Discourse IV, December 10, 1771).

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ruins, gesture to the classical ideal and the discourse of imperial decline.

Hodges' inherent flair for drama tested his oft-stated commitment to strict visual fidelity.14

Long hours spent studying meteorological conditions while atop the deck of Captain Cook's

Resolution fashioned a keen observer of Indian light and atmosphere.15 He seldom hesitated to

exaggerate light and shadow to create atmospheric drama (A View of a Mosque at Mounher, c.

1781?; Figure 6-7) or to define the alien geometry of an Indian monument (A Group of Temples

at Deogarh, Santal Parganas, Bihar; c. 1782; Figure 6-8). Yet the dramatic flourishes were mere

complements to scenes otherwise carefully constructed within the borders of the Picturesque.

Through his fundamentally non-confrontational, picturesque images Hodges embraced

empire, its concept, fact and future. He bristled at the very idea that indigenous forces would

challenge the right of the Company to establish a commercial monopoly. Writing of Lord Clive's

victory at the battle of Plassey in June 1757, he lauded the heroics of the general and the

politician, stating:

. . . on that plain was laid the foundation of an empire in India, the influence of
which has extended over a larger tract of country, and greater numbers of people,
than have been united under any one government since the time of Aurungzebe.16

14. Despite Hodges apparent liberties, he assured his readers: "It will, I flatter myself, not be disagreeable
to my readers to be informed, that they consist of a few plain representations of what I observed on the
spot, expressed in the simple garb of truth, without the smallest embellishment from fiction, or from
fancy." Hodges, Travels in India, iv and v.
15. Pal and Dehejia, 101–102.
16. Hodges, Travels in India, 18. Quilley argues that, because the artist traveled in India prior to "the
full-scale systematic, administrative hegemony of the nineteenth-century Raj," Hodges' work "cannot
properly be appropriated as part of the account of Orientalism, theorized by Edward Said, as a consistent
western discourse about 'the Orient' that served the political and ideological ends of western imperialism,
by presenting the east as 'naturally' inferior, decadent and incapable of self-government." Quilley,

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Moreover, the benefits of empire were personal and pecuniary. Some of Hodges' most

impressive canvases were intimately associated with his friend and steadfast benefactor,

Governor-General Warren Hastings (A View of the West Side of the Fortress of Chunargarh on

the Ganges (c. 1785) and (Storm on the Ganges, with Mrs. Hastings near the Colgon Rocks; c.

1790; Figure 6-9). 17 Both of these works refer to the courage and perseverance of the

Governor-General and his wife.

Many of his larger oil paintings evince a "hybrid aesthetic" based on a picturesque, subtly

classicized landscape executed in visual language both accessible and academically creditable.

They address contemporary interests, among Hodges and his patrons, in Mughal miniatures,

popular notions of climatic determinism, current moral philosophies and vague associations

between the British and the Mughal empires (View of the Ghats at Benares, 1787; and A Camp of

a thousand Men formed by Augustus Cleveland three miles from Bhagalpur, with his Mansion in

the distance, 1782). 18 For the broader audience, Hodges marketed his images less on intellectual

concerns and more on the basis of their purported accuracy and political, social and sentimental

appeal:

"Hodges and India," 138.

17. Quilley and Bonehill, 162 plate 55, 185 plate 70. Hastings sought refuge at the fort during his
campaign against Raja Chait Singh of Benares. J. Talboys Wheeler, India and the Frontier States of
Afghanistan, Nipal and Burma, Vol. 1 (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1899), 434. Storm on the
Ganges memorializes the perilous journey that Marian Hastings made in order to be near her husband
when he fell dangerously ill. The painting was the centerpiece of the Hastings collection. Quilley and
Bonehill, 185 plate 70.
18. Natasha Eaton, "Hodge's visual genealogy for colonial India, 1780–95," in Quilley and Bonehill, 35–
37.

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 The intimate connexion which has so long subsisted between this country and the
continent of India, naturally renders every Englishman deeply interested in all that
relates to a quarter of the globe which has been the theatre of scenes highly
important to his country; and which, perhaps, at the moment when he peruses the
description of it, may be the residence or the grave of some of his dearest
friends.19

Hodges' collection of forty-eight aquatints published as Select Views of India, Drawn on

the Spot, in the Years 1780, 1781, 1782, and 1783 proved to be his most influential contribution

to the European visualization of India. In contrast to his canvases, firmly grounded in an

"orientalized classicism," Select Views recalled the "roughness" of a departed empire so prized in

picturesque interpretations (A View of the Ruins of Part of the Palace and Mosque at Futtypoor

Sicri).20 The aquatints, many hand-colored by the artist, focused on the sites of British victories

or sensationalized anecdotes. Unlike Hodges' Travels in India of 1794, more of a dispassionate

narrative befitting the artist-gentleman-historian, Select Views was intended to appeal to patriotic

sentiment as well as to curiosity about Indian topography and culture.21

Thomas and William Daniell

Hodges was soon eclipsed by successors Thomas Daniell and his nephew William,

though Hodges' images deeply informed the Daniells' interpretations of India and their choice of

subjects. If Hodges pioneered the Western visualization of India, the Daniells popularized it.

19. Hodges, Travels in India, iii.

20. William Hodges, Select Views in India, Drawn on the Spot, In the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 And 1783,
And Executed in Aqua Tinta (London: William Hodges; John Wells; J. Grives; 1785–88).
21. Quilley, "Hodges and India," 181. Unfortunately, Select Views was not the financial success Hodges
had predicted.

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The overarching influence of Thomas and William Daniell certainly may be traced through

British art into the 1870s, and arguably even to at least one monumental painting by the

American Edwin Lord Weeks (discussed in a later chapter).

Thomas (1749–1840) cannily secured permission to sail to India by touting his

qualifications as an engraver, an uncertain claim but one that apparently convinced the East India

Company. He took along fifteen-year-old William (1769–1837), inexperienced but eager, as his

assistant. They established a studio in Calcutta where they produced the first topographical

prints of the city, Views of Calcutta (1786–88), which circulated widely in India and Europe.

When the publication reached Hodges, he wrote that the Daniells "are highly to be commended

for their accuracy." 22 However, when Hodges' Select Views arrived in Calcutta sometime

between 1786 and 1788, the Daniells found little in it to praise.23

Though the Daniells did not express reciprocal admiration they were sufficiently inspired

to embark on their own artistic journey to see just how they might surpass Hodges' Select Views.

The Daniells were much more ambitious than Hodges. Armed with the advice of the leading

antiquarians, Sanskritists, and surveyors resident in Calcutta, in 1788 they set out "up country"

on a self-financed expedition. They did not return to Calcutta for over three years, in late 1791.24

Remaining only long enough to finish some works and raise funds, they set off again in March of

22. Hodges, Travels in India, 16.

23. On comparing Hodges' drawing of the Red Fort in Agra to their own sketches, William declared that
"like all his others" it was "exceedingly faulty." Mildred Archer, Early Views of India, The Picturesque
Journeys of Thomas and William Daniell 1786–1794 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 37 and
quoting William Daniell, 43 (no further citation).
24. Archer, Early Views, 37–41.

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1792, this time to the south.25

While the Daniells were occupied on the first leg of their expeditions, other British artists

arrived in Calcutta in search of professional success. Among them, in 1799, was Scottish

landscape artist and topographical engraver James Moffat (1776–1815), hired by a printing house

to help churn out a steady stream of government publications.

Much of Moffat's work reflects attitudes no doubt prevalent among his employers.

Whether from political posturing or lack of talent, Moffatt's images convey little in the way of

vitality, drama or active engagement with indigenous culture. They are neither pensive nor

pictorial. For example, despite the possibilities inherent in the subject, the figures and buildings

in View of a Mosque at Moorshedabad with Representation of a Bazar or Indian Market (1809;

Figure 6-10) are undistinguished and interchangeable, locked in a stagnant culture and stripped

even of the elegies of decay. Nonetheless, Moffat built a solid reputation among those

administrators and tourists eager for a remembrance of India, however complacent and self-

congratulatory. His popular, modestly priced subscriptions appealed to the prevailing tastes of a

largely official clientele.26

25. Archer, Early Views, 141. The first journey took the Daniells northwest from Calcutta as far as
Srinagar, about 1,500 miles away (to Murshidabad, Rajmahal, Patna, Jaunpur, Benares, Allahabad,
Cawnpore, Lucknow, Faizabad, Fatehgarh, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Delhi, Amroha, Kashipur and many
other towns and cities on the route). The southern tour began with a ship to Madras, then a trek as far
south as cape Comorin at the very tip of the subcontinent (as well as Gingee, Tanjore, Ramesvaram,
Kalaka, Kattalam, Madura, Atur, Trichinopoly, Sandaridrug, Anchetti, Bangalor, Kolar, Ambur, Arcot and
back to Madras). For maps, see Archer 44–45 and 189.
26. Hermione de Alemeida and George H. Gilpin, Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the
Prospect of India (Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 249–252. The
authors observe: "In the imperial simplicities of Moffat's views we see with clarity the process employed
by British theorists of empire and colonial administrators to first neutralize the inhabitants, culture, and
landscape of the Indian subcontinent and then return these to an original primitivity that is neither novel

216
 As Moffat was busy in Calcutta generating politically-sanctioned views, the Daniells

were furthering more ambitious plans on their southern tour. After landing in Madras, they

tramped through territory familiar to the English from three decades of war between the

Kingdom of Mysore and the East India Company. Their timing was a deliberate assessment of

the marketability of first-hand field accounts. Hearing that a decisive battle was eminent, they

set out into the teeth of the fighting, arriving shortly after the the siege of Seringapatam, during

which General Cornwallis' army, allied with the Maratha Empire and the Nizam of Hyderabad,

forced the surrender of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore (inspiring Robert Home's The Reception

of the Mysorean Hostage Princes by Marquis Cornwallis, 26 February 1792, 1793; Figure 6-11).

With their retinue of forty-eight servants and bearers, the pair pushed on to the hill country to

sketch imposing forts, picturesque architecture and monuments made famous to the British

public by association with the earlier exploits of Major-General Robert Clive against the French.

Circling northward, the Daniells arrived back in Madras eight months later, in November of

1792.27

After spending some months in Madras working up their sketches into oils and promoting

sales, the Daniells planned to cap their nearly seven years in India with a western journey to

Bombay. Their intentions took a more archaeological turn when they teamed up with artist

James Wales (1747–95) to paint a number of ancient temples, including the sculpted cave

temples of Elephanta in Bombay harbor, the rock-cut monuments in the Kanheri caves in the

nor interesting—and wholly without a discerning consciousness of the new possessors of India." 252–53.
27. Archer, Early Views, 141–44.

217
forests west of Bombay, and the early Hindu and Buddhist cave temples of Jogeshwari. Eager to

return to England after an absence of some nine years, the Daniells booked passage to Canton

when their plans to sail from Bombay were sidelined by the outbreak of war between Britain and

France.28

Settling in Fitzroy Square, the uncle and nephew team immediately began production of

Oriental Scenery: Twenty-Four Views in Hindoostan (Figure 6-12), a series of aquatints

advertised beginning in March 1795 as available through subscription. This was succeeded by

another twenty-four aquatints likewise entitled Oriental Scenery. Building on the apparent

success was yet a third series in Oriental Scenery completed in 1803, as well as a fourth series

completed in 1805, Twenty-Four Landscapes: Views in Hindoostan. With William's assistance,

Thomas Daniell published a further twelve architectural engravings, Antiquities of India,

(October 1799–June 1800; Figure 6-13); to this series was appended another (untitled) set of

twelve engravings of buildings published in 1808.

Thomas Daniell was an indefatigable worker. In addition to the pricey subscription

series, before the century turned he had exhibited a dozen India subjects at the Royal Academy,

as A.R.A. in 1796 and as R.A. in 1799. Both he and William exhibited there and at the British

Institution regularly. For wealthy patrons like the Earl of Egremont, the Daniells' oils perfectly

combined topical interests with romantic landscape. To address demand for their work in a more

affordable and widely available format, the lavish, limited print run folio sets of Oriental Scenery

were published in smaller, less expensive quarto versions between 1812 and 1816. At this time

28. Archer, Early Views, 190–92.

218
the images from all six sets were combined into one volume, also confusingly entitled Oriental

Scenery.29

Unlike the more limited circulations of artists such as James Moffat, the Daniells' images

boasted wide appeal. Reviewers and critics lauded the aquatints for their superior technique and

production quality. The Daniells' series, in fine paintings and affordable prints, graced the

libraries of the aristocracy, enlivened the walls of well-heeled merchants with lucrative Indian

connections and hung proudly in the modest homes of thousands of soldiers, pensioners and

commoners who had intimate associations with the subcontinent. Oriental Scenery's exotic

architecture flourished in blue-and-white splendor on Staffordshire serving plates and water jugs.

Exquisite panoramic wallpapers by French firms Jean Zuber et Cie and Joseph Dufour et Cie,

L'Indoustan and Paysage Indien, featured images lifted from Oriental Scenery.30

The Daniells' reputation for precision and new insights into the variety of Indian temples

and buildings prompted a revolution in English landscape and residential architecture. The onion

domes, chahhatris and chujjas of Sezincote, the magnificent Cotswolds home of Sir Charles

Cockerell, were partly designed by Thomas Daniell. This hybrid architectural expression

culminated in the plans for the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, for which architect John Nash

borrowed four volumes of Oriental Scenery from the Royal Library at Carlton House.31

Scholars and connoisseurs admired the Daniells' exactitude, adventuresome spirit, and

29. Archer, Early Views, 219–23.

30. Archer, Early Views, 228.
31. Archer, Early Views, 230–33.

219
their combination of art with scholarly inquiry. Orientalist Louis Matthieu Langlès (1763-1824),

Keeper of the Royal Library in Paris, republished several of the Daniells' aquatints in his

Monument anciens et modernes de l'Indoustan (1812, 1821).32 Collector, connoisseur and

scholar Thomas Hope (1769-1831) turned to the Daniells to support his arguments regarding the

aesthetic influences of world cultures. James Rennell, Surveyor General, used their sketches to

correct his Map of Hindoostan (1784).33 Langlès, Hope and contemporaries believed in the

Daniells' mission and in their sentiments:

It was an honourable feature in the late century, that the passion for discovery,
originally kindled by the thirst for gold, was exalted to higher and nobler aims
than commercial speculations. Since this new era of civilization, a liberal spirit of
curiosity has prompted undertakings to which avarice lent no incentive, and
fortune annexed no reward: associations have been formed, not for piracy, but
humanity: science has had her adventurers, and philanthropy her achievements:
the shores of Asia have been invaded by a race of students with no rapacity but for
lettered relics; by naturalists, whose cruelty extends not to one human inhabitant;
by philosophers, ambitious only for the extirpation of error, and the diffusion of
truth. It remains for the artist to claim his part in these guiltless spoliations, and to
transport to Europe the picturesque beauties of those favored regions.34

Though the invocation of "guiltless spoliations" is suspect, there is no denying that Thomas and

William Daniell transported to Europe the "picturesque beauties" of India and disseminated them

across class and political boundaries. The Daniells defined the European vision of India for the

better part of the nineteenth century, until it was re-interpreted—more boldly and expansively—

by Edwin Lord Weeks beginning in the 1880s.

32. Archer, Early Views, 223–25.

33. De Almeida and Gilpin, 190.
34. Thomas Daniell and William Daniell, A Picturesque Voyage to India by the Way of China (London:
Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1810), i–ii.

220
The Legacy of William Hodges and the Daniells

Even more so than the images of Hodges, the Daniells' definitions of India rested

specifically on British audiences' appreciation of the Picturesque. In the coming decades, this

definition was tweaked and somewhat expanded but never challenged. Over the course of the

century, the collective Victorian images of India embody a remarkably cohesive vision that arose

from this eighteenth-century aesthetic program. In effect the Picturesque froze interpretations of

India and insulated them from contemporary aesthetic debates and practice in Britain. A brief

survey of a few of the later British artists in India confirms this assertion.

Initially, admiration of the Daniells sparked imitation. Henry Salt (1780–1827), faced

with an unpromising career as a portraitist, pleaded with family friend George Annesley,

Viscount Valentia to accompany him as secretary and draughtsman on Valencia's tour through

India from January 1803 to December 1804.35 Planning from the outset to leverage his

association with Valentia, before quitting England Salt advertised for subscriptions with the

enticement that his works would pick up where the Daniells' Oriental Scenery left off.36 Salt

provided dozens of illustrations for Lord Valentia's three-volume Travels in India (1809). In the

same year he published his own Twenty-Four Views Taken in St. Helena, the Cape, India,

Ceylon, Abyssinia and Egypt, in every respect modeled closely on Oriental Scenery.

35. Deborah Manley and Peta Rée, Henry Salt: Artist, Traveller, Diplomat, Egyptologist (London: Libri
Publications, 2001), 7–15.
36. De Almeida and Gilpin, 246.

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 Salt never much strayed from the artistic protocols of his time. As A View at Lucknow

(1809; Figure 6-14) demonstrates, Salt's India is a placid land of dirt roads and pastoral

occupations, much like any English idyll except for the elephants. The hilltop mosque, identified

by Lord Valencia as that of Aurangzeb, is more decorative than threatening, even for those aware

of its long associations with Mughal power.

A few years later, James Baillie Fraser (1783–1856) survived shipwreck to land in

Calcutta in October 1813. Distracted from the family mercantile business by his artistic

inclinations, Fraser eagerly sketched his way through Madras, Lucknow, Agra, Delhi, Bombay,

Gwalior and, seeking the source of the rivers Jumna and Ganges, the Himalayas of the northwest.

His journey resulted in twenty landscape aquatints published in London as Views in the Himala

Mountains (1820). Another twenty-four aquatints formed Views of Calcutta and its Environs

(1824–26), an homage to Britain's expanding government complex, despite Fraser's extreme

disdain for the city he labeled "detestable Calcutta."37 Fraser's sweeping views of Calcutta

typically feature monumental imperial architecture that towers serenely over tiny local

inhabitants, plodding along with buckets and oxcarts or entertained by a merry show of jugglers

or flame-swallowers (Figure 6-15).

Salt and Fraser had more in common than their admiration for that proven success,

Oriental Scenery. Both were students of George Chinnery (1774–1852), who turned his back on

a faltering Dublin art market to join his older brother John, an East India Company civil servant,

37. De Almeida and Gilpin, 235–36.

222
in Madras.38 Chinnery was among the few professional artists to spend a lengthy time in India.

Disembarking from the Gilwell in December 1802, Chinnery proceeded to make a name for

himself as a portraitist. Early on he garnered a number of important commissions, including the

ceremonial portrait of the new chief justice of Bengal, Sir Henry Russell, a project made more

lucrative through the marketing of engraved reproductions sold in London.39 Until he was forced

to flee from creditors to Macao, Chinnery was an admired fixture in society, a "man of real

genius in his profession" and "the very life and soul of painting for many a long year of his

unrivalled triumph and success in Calcutta.".40

Though portraits paid the bills (or some of them) Chinnery's great enthusiasm was for

landscape and genre. An early appraisal describes him as a "fearless and successful distributor of

broad masses of light and shade—as a sweet colourist in his landscapes, as a delineator of

nature,—and of remarkable fidelity."41 The British architectural triumphs in Calcutta held little

fascination for Chinnery. His fluid, sinuous line was trained on everyday Bengali life in its

surrounding villages. Bathers in the Hooghly River, mothers minding their children, crudely

thatched cottages, lush vegetation, sagging ruins and fallen minarets were Chinnery's chief

subjects (Figure 6-16). His genuine interest in the routines of village life imparted an

38. Tillotson, 65; de Almeida and Gilpin, 234.

39. Patrick Conner, “Chinnery, George (1774–1852),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed.
H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), n.p.
40. Henry Barkley Henderson, The Bengalie, or sketches of society in the East, vol. 2 (Calcutta: W.
Rushton, 1843), 14–15.
41. Henderson, 16.

223
incremental vitality and prominence to his figures, though his scenes never strayed from period

definitions of the poetic and the pictorial.42 Yet, in light of the artist's fondness for his Indian

mistress and refusal to give up the out-of-fashion hookah, they suggest a strong personal

sentiment and awareness of the changes rapidly befalling India.43

Cumulatively, the works of William Hodges, Thomas and William Daniell, James Moffat,

Henry Salt, James Baillie Fraser and George Chinnery express how practitioners of the

Picturesque dominated the production of views of India in the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries. Bracketed at one end by Hodges' invocations of the sublime and at the other

by Moffat's more sterile interpretations, the specifics of the Picturesque were negotiable but the

overall structure was not. Nor was the content. Though Hodges wrote of his despair as witness

to the plight of refugees "bearing on their shoulders the small remains of their little property,

mothers with infants at their breasts," such was not an appropriate subject for the public.44 The

serenely composed views of the Picturesque were more palatable and more marketable.

Applied to India, the Picturesque was more than an aesthetic theory. As William Hodges

wrote of the victory of Clive at Plassey in Travels in India, on that plain "was laid the foundation

42. "Look at every goat at the village side, the bullock, the hackery, the discoloured mosque and ruined
wall with its thousand-tinted coating of age and moss, and of every broken form and mellowed hue, so
dear to the eye of the artist: these, as Chinnery used enthusiastically to affirm, 'ARE MADE TO BE
PAINTED.' " Henderson, 22.
43. Rohatgi and Godrej, 73.
44. Hodges, Travels in India, 5. Interestingly, Hodges' descriptions were reprinted for the American
public. "Description of Madras, or Fort St. George, and its environs," Literary Magazine and American
Register 8, no. 51 (Dec. 1807): 321–24.

224
of an empire in India."45 Hodges was convinced that his images were an inherent part of that

foundation, that every Englishman was naturally "deeply interested" in the grand imperial project

to command a distant "quarter of the globe," the "residence or the grave of some of his dearest

friends."46 Threading all of Hodges' picturesque views and his writings was a subtext both

patriotic and personal: the ambitions of empire and the human stories behind them.

Tilting the Picturesque to the service of empire, the book of views of the theaters of the

Indian wars became a publishing staple, a format that the Victorian public continued to snap up

long after the arrival of photography. In seemingly inexhaustible favor were scenes of the last

campaigns of the Mysore war, which saw Seringapatam fall and Tipu Sultan killed. Mining this

rich vein were Robert Home's Select Views in Mysore, the country of Tippoo Sultan, from

drawings taken on the spot by Mr. Home; with historical descriptions (1794); Captain A. Allan's

Views in the Mysore Country (1793); Robert Colebrook's Twelve Views in Mysore (reissued

1805); and James Hunter's Picturesque scenery in the Kingdom of Mysore (1802).47

Picturesque views of India were linked with civic duty and British national pride. In his

preface to A Picturesque Voyage to India by the Way of China (1810), Thomas Daniell noted:

"There are other associations of sentiment, which in this country must lend to oriental scenery

peculiar attractions: a large part of Hindostan is now annexed to the British empire: and it

cannot but afford gratification to our public feelings to become familiar with a country to which

45. Hodges, Travels in India, 17.

46. Hodges, Travels in India, iii.
47. Archer and Lightbrown, 82–83.

225
we are not attached by the ties of consanguinity and affection."48

In addition to the exigencies of empire and the conventions of the Picturesque, for

Hodges, the Daniells and their contemporaries the foremost charge of the artist in India was to

render his "guiltless spoliations" with a keen eye for accuracy and verity. Some succeeded more

than others, but sincerity of vision was a constant theme and objective. Without doubt these

artists were swayed by the preferences and political stances of patrons, but ostensibly they

remained above the corruptions of imperial officialdom. In theory, at least, artists in the service

of beauty and science were not to be intimidated by politics.49

However, the guiding premises for later British artists in India were not as apparent. Too

often their artistic "spoliations" were decreasingly guiltless and increasingly derivative. Where

earlier artists had traveled to record first-hand scenes of India that they had read or heard about,

many later artists, particularly amateurs, gleaned inspiration from a careful perusal of widely-

published images. Some of these amateurs were highly accomplished. Their landscapes were in

turn engraved, published and disseminated in England and India, providing the public with

inexpensive, expanded views of India generally cast in repetitions of the Picturesque.

Best known of the early amateurs was Charles D'Oyly (1781–1845), for ten years a

student of Chinnery.50 D'Oyly transmitted Chinnery's style to an entire generation of amateur

48. De Almeida, 193 and note 30, quoting Thomas and William Daniell, 'Introduction,' A Picturesque
Voyage to India by the Way of China, 1–2.
49. See discussion in de Almeida, 253.
50. "Alhough Chinnery's influence is seen most clearly in the work of D'Oyly and his circle, he had a
number of other devoted pupils and followers. Amongst these were James Baillie Fraser, William
Prinsep, a merchant in the firm of Palmer and Company, Jane Atkinson, wife of the surgeon James
Atkinson (nos. 131, 132) and the Hon. John Elliot, son of the Governor-General, Lord Minto. James

226
Anglo-Indian artists. Born in Calcutta and educated in England, D'Oyly returned to India in

1798 as an officer of the East India Company. He was much admired by the European

community. With its air of cheeky bonhomie, his studio became a fashionable hub for the

viewing of recent works.51

D'Oyly's most prolific period was while resident in Patna in the 1820s where, not overly

taxed by his nominal duties as the East India Company's opium agent, "His pencil like his

hookah-snake was always in his hand."52 The subjects of rural India captivated D'Oyly; like

Chinnery, he turned to the prosaic scenes of village life and generally away from the bustling

streets of Calcutta. His pen and ink drawings, usually executed from a slightly elevated

viewpoint, are crammed with detail and frequently overflow with tropical vegetation.

In addition to his more serious landscapes, D'Oyly was known for his charming domestic

sketches and irreverent caricatures, in which he was as likely to skewer the pretensions of the

governors as to mock the customs of the local population (The D'Oyly Drawing Room at Patna,

1820-24; The Immersion of the Goddess, c. 1820). Often these small works carry an arrogance

and subtle condescension that reveals the rapidly widening social chasm between the British and

George of the Bengal Infantry (no. 113) and the engineer Robert Smith (nos. 107, 130) almost certainly
knew him and his work. All these amateur artists were viewing India in the manner of Chinnery, who, as
D'Oyly wrote 'Looks at nature with an eye bold and free/ And steals her charms more keenly than the
rest.' " Archer and Lightbrown, 72.
51. Pal and Dehijia, 111. While at Patna, bon vivant D'Oyly formed the lighthearted "United Patna and
Gaya Society or Behar School of Athens, for the promotion of Arts and Sciences and for the circulation of
fun and merriment of all descriptions," Archer and Lightbrown, 71
52. Rohatgi and Godrej, 81, quoting William Prinsep (no further citation).

227
the Indians (Tom Raw Hiring a Palanquin on the Esplanade, c. 1818).53 For all his love of India,

D'Oyly apparently relished the visualization of indigenous servitude. The scenes from his

compendium of lithographs, The European in India (1813), consist mainly of a broad taxonomy

of servants, pipe-bearer to snake-catcher, in attendance upon languorous Englishmen. In the

image A Dancing Woman, of Bengal Exhibiting Before an European Family (1813; Figure 6-17),

the simple gesture of fan to cheek clues the viewer to the supercilious English woman, and

underscores the outcome of her assessment. If that were too subtle, the accompanying text by

Thomas Williamson runs:

Not, indeed, that much can be said by this meretricious tribe in general. The
beauty of individuals, and the grace with which they dance, or accompany their
songs, usually establishes the fame of the set to which they appertain. For the
greater portion are either slaves, bought by adventurous bawds, during times of
scarcity; or are deluded girls, that have been seduced from their families at a very
early age; probably, when only five or six years old, and trained up to this
infamous calling.54

These social caricatures represent D'Oyly's chief claim to originality, for many of the

landscapes and genre paintings by "the most distinguished amateur lately in India" can scarcely

be distinguished from those of Chinnery. The same tired, lumbering oxen and creaky wooden

53. D'Oyly's satire illustrates the adventures of a clumsy—in every sense of the word—cadet recently
posted to the East India Company's service. Charles D'Oyly, Tom Raw, the Griffin: A Burlesque Poem, in
Twelve Cantos (London: R. Ackermann, 1828).
54. Charles D'Oyly, The European in India; from a collection of drawings by Charles Doyley, Esq.
(London: Edward Orme, 1813). It is likely that D'Oyly was inspired by the satiric art of Kalighat
painters that poked fun at the often preposterous attitudes and errors of the English; de Almeida, 261.
D'Oyly's satires, however condescending, are far less exploitative than the fanatics and freaks, deformities
and barbarities sketched by Captain Charles Gold and published for popular consumption in folio as
Oriental Drawings: Sketched between the Years 1791 and 1798 (London: G. and W. Nicoll (Bunney),
1806.

228
carts meander peacefully across the canvases of both artists (A Ruined Mosque with a Thatched

Hut, in Bengal, c. 1810; A View with a Tomb in Bengal, c. 1810). 55 In D'Oyly's case, maturity

did little to foster innovation. In his later career, D'Oyly's allegiance to Chinnery appears to have

given way to a confident move backwards, in the direction of William Hodges (The Chowsathi

Ghat, Benares, c. 1840; Part of the City of Benares, 1787; Figures 6-18, 6-19).56

Despite the numbers of accomplished and enthusiastic British amateurs, few after

D'Oyly and James Baillie Fraser bothered to publish their works.57 This was not due to superior

competition from professional artists, whose collective interests in India continued to diminish.

The East India Company's increasing focus on the bottom line led to fewer opportunities for

fortune-making, hence a decline in the lavish lifestyles of the nabobs and a domino-effect on the

art market. Perhaps more importantly, familiarity was beginning to sober the grand novelty of

55. On D'Oyly as "the most distinguished amateur lately in India," see Henderson, 11. D'Oyly's sketches
were engraved by John Landseer between 184 and 1827; lithographs of his views of Calcutta were
published by Dickinson & Co. posthumously in 1848. In Patna in the mid-1820s he ran his own
lithographic press, with the assistance of Indian artists, under the name The Behar Amateur Lithographic
Press. From 1828 to 1831 he published hundreds of his own drawings and those of this followers, the
most serious effort being his Sketches of the New Road in a Journey from Calcutta to Gyah (1830). For a
comparison of Chinnery and D'Oyly, see Tillotson, 67.
56. Or, perhaps it was a backwards move in the direction of Richard Wilson. Typical of the small world
of British artists in India, D'Oyly was a great admirer of Richard Wilson, a founder of the English
landscape school and teacher of William Hodges. A contemporary manuscript notes that original
drawings by Wilson hung in D'Oyly's drawing-room in Patna. Rohatgi and Godrej, 99.
57. Archer and Lightbrown (72–73) identify the following: watercolorist Ezekiel Barton, Assistant
Surveyor in Garwhal, Sirmur and Hindur after the Nepal War; James Manson of the Bengal Army,
Superintendent of the Geological Survey of the Himalayas from 1823–26; and Lieut. Colonel Charles
Forrest, a staff officer in Bengal who in 1824 published A Picturesque tour along the rivers Ganges and
Jumna. To this they append the work of Colonel James Tod, through whose efforts the sketches of
various officers under his command were engraved and used as illustrations to Tod's Annals and
Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829).

229
empire. As a consequence of shrinking coffers and narrowing minds, paintings became smaller

in size and less ambitious in content.58

Of course, in the early 1830s there were still a number of professional British artists

traveling to and resident in India. Despite the shifting economy, the ongoing wars and the

constant press of commercialization, for many of them an improbable aura of romance still clung

to Indian subjects. George Duncan Beechey (1797–1852), son of royal portraitist Sir William

Beechey, settled in Lucknow in 1831 to succeed Robert Home as court painter to the king of

Oudh. The idealization of Beechey's bejeweled, coquettish A Hindoo Lady (engraved as Hinda

by G. H. Phillips, 1835; Figure 6-20), exhibited to favorable review at Somerset House in 1832,

not only alluded to the heroine of Thomas Moore's The Fire Worshippers (one of the four

narrative poems comprising Lalla Rookh), but also to India itself. Beechey was merely carrying

on the tradition of an earlier generation (for example, Francesco Rinaldi, Portrait of a Mogul

Lady, 1787) if making it a bit more coquettish.

Some years later Horace Hayman Wilson, chair of Sanskrit at Oxford and librarian to the

East India Company, sought to capitalize on what he thought was the British public's continuing

romance with India. He engaged David Roberts (1796–1864) to rework original drawings by

army officer Thomas Bacon (1813–92) into the dreamy fantasies of the Oriental Portfolio, first

published in 1839.59 In the preface, Wilson noted professional artists' waning interest in India

58. Archer and Lightbrown, 73.

59. Archer and Lightbrown, 105–6 and 122–25. The authors note that in 1837 Bacon had published
illustrations for the travel book First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindostan.

230
since the departure of the Daniells, and proposed to rectify the lapse with the Oriental Portfolio:

. . . while other eastern countries—Turkey, Syria, Egypt, have been ransacked for
objects of delineation, India, although so much more our own country, has been
comparatively overlooked. The distance of its site, the difficulty and delay of a
voyage thither, the supposed noxiousness of its climate, and the peculiarities of its
social organization, have hitherto deterred artists of professional eminence from
visiting India . . . we have therefore been indebted almost wholly to amateur
accomplishments for those representations of Indian costume, scenery, and
architecture, which have been made public; and although the works derived from
this source have been of singular merit and extent, yet, as the production of
independent taste and fancy, they have been more or less of a desultory and
capricious character, and of contracted limits, leaving the public still in want of
any thing like a comprehensive and systematic series of illustrations.60

But Wilson and Roberts were too late. Oriental Portfolio was not a commercial

success.61 Over the 1830s, the British public's shift in attitudes toward India had accelerated.

The romantic visual language that had characterized most views of India for decades had lost

much of its appeal. The Claudian overtones that sustained the allure of images like Scene in the

Zenana at Fatehpur Sikiri (Figure 6-21) were far less mesmerizing in 1839 than they were in

1639.

No doubt this was a surprise to Roberts, fresh from his recent success, Picturesque

Sketches in Spain (1837). But Sketches in Spain traded on that country's reputation as a land of

love and romance. Undaunted, Roberts rebounded from Oriental Portfolio with the enormously

popular The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia (1842–49, three volumes), a

60. Archer and Lightbrown, 123, quoting from Wilson's preface to Oriental Portfolio.
61. "The same objection that we made to the first part applies to this,—namely, that the atmospheric
effects and vegetation are European, not Asiatic; a defect not lessened by the hazy, feeble style of Gauci's
lithography." "Publications Received," Spectator 13, no. 629 (1840): 689–90 at 690.

231
work that appealed to Christian piety as well as cultural curiosity. Roberts' timing and his

instincts were correct; there was indeed a burgeoning British interest in the "East." It simply did

not extend to India.

British Artists in India: 1830s and 1840s

Even as Roberts was working like mad on the Oriental Portfolio, broad currents of

change were sweeping India, powered by the forces of liberalism, capitalism and evangelicalism.

Spurred by the ideas packaged in James Mill's History of British India of 1818 ("with the

severity of an eye unclouded by any experience of the East or any knowledge of its

languages"),62 India was cast as a backward, "hideous state of society" that had made "but a few

of the earliest steps in the progress to civilization."63 Reformist visions, like that of Lord William

Bentinck, appointed Governor-General in 1828, became ascendant in Britain and among the

British in India. The resultant, lofty justification for British interference in India was wound

around the unique duty and destiny of Britain to apply the mechanisms of law, education, trade

and administration to elevate India. India would be civilized. Thus the conquered people

became the grand experiment.

However, it was not enough to propose that through the imposition of new schemes of

property rights, justice and education India might be remade in the British image. To firmly

62. Archer and Lightbrown, 113.

63. Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; reprinted
1998), 30. Metcalf quotes James Mill, The History of British India (reprinted Chicago, 1975), 226–27,
236–37, 246–48.

232
secure Britain's hold on the top of the cultural hierarchy, India must be ranked at (or near) the

bottom. Ironically, the same cultural imperative that brought the promise of progress demanded

the devaluation and denigration of the present.64 British scholars and artists responded

accordingly.

At first, a certain contempt for Indian studies began to develop. Deeper scholarly

investigations discredited the claims of some early Indologists and denied the assertions of some

philologists that Sanskrit—and by extension, ancient Indian civilization—surpassed in elegance

and perfection Greek or Latin. Mill's influential Utilitarianism was not predisposed to award

India any status in the ranking of civilizations that did not rest on a barbarous past and a

denigrated present. This growing contempt was compounded by the rise of Evangelicalism,

emanating from Cambridge. The Evangelical view of India was that of land steeped in idolatry

and sin whose highest purpose was as a staging ground for the conversion of the world's heathen

population.65

Horace Hayman Wilson, publisher of David Roberts' failed Oriental Portfolio, saw all of

this unfolding in the 1830s. He laid the blame for the failed Portfolio squarely on James Mill.

Writing in 1846 about the officers in the service of the Company, Wilson declared “a harsh and

illiberal spirit has of late years prevailed in the conduct and councils of the rising service in

India, which owes its origin to impressions imbibed in early life from the History of Mr. Mill." 66

64. Metcalf, 34.

65. Archer and Lightbrown, 112–14.
66. Archer and Lightbrown, 114 quoting H. H. Wilson in his edition of James Mill's History of British
India (5th ed., 1846), i, xii, xiii.

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The noble, wistful, romantic India no longer had a British audience.

Writing about the second quarter of the nineteenth century, art historian Mildred Archer,

curator of Prints and Drawings at the India Office Library and foremost authority on British

images of India, noted:

But to the 1830s and 1840s India appeared all too often a land idolatrous and
fever-ridden, its inhabitants stagnating in intellectual and social sloth, and in spite
of earnest efforts to popularise her monuments and scenery, no attractive counter-
image was ever successfully shaped in positive English minds. The literature of
India produced in England now became even more what to some extent it always
had been, a literature intended for that specialist public which had lived and
worked in India, and learned to love it. 67

Given the time, the expense, the market's waning interest and the uncertainties of critical

reception, the stream of professional British artists willing to make the long and costly journey to

India slowed to a trickle. India was best left to those prepared to address either its administrative

needs or its spiritual ones. This is not to say that there were no British artists at work in India in

the 1840s and 1850s. But their intentions and their means differed from those of their

predecessors. Generally, they were either amateurs in military service or government

households, attached to the Indian courts, or of independent means.

Though princely patronage was not what it once was, professional and amateur artists

continued to be drawn to the Indian royal courts which afforded glamorous subjects and

comparatively luxurious comforts. One such amateur was Emily Eden (1797–1869), who

accompanied her brother, Lord Auckland (Governor-General, 1836–42) ‘up the country’ from

67. Archer and Lightbrown, 125 and at 114: "The fascination of Hindu antiquity and the comparatively
low esteem in which contemporary India was held contributed with Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism to
diminish the attractions of contemporary India.”

234
Calcutta to Lahore and back, between 1837 and 1841. Eden was entranced by the Rajas of

Benares and Patiala, the King of Oudh, the lesser princes of the Punjab Hill States, but especially

by the unmatched splendor of the Sikh court of Ranjit Singh. In the eyes of Emily Eden, favored

son Sher Singh and his young son Pratap Singh positively glittered in jewels and rich clothing.

Their proud mounts were “a map of living emeralds;” one even sported the Kohinoor diamond.

Eden’s highly accomplished watercolor scenes were lithographed for The Princes and People of

India (1844), a work resplendent with the details of court dress, the brilliantly woven coverings

of elephants and camels, the aristocratic exoticism of cheetahs and the trappings of the hunt.68

Occasionally professional artists ventured to India, but stayed only when they could reel

in that elusive prize, the wealthy and consistent patron. Typically this meant the artist’s work was

conceived as a tribute to the patron of the moment. Overlapping the end of Emily Eden’s

sojourns were those of Frederick Christian Lewis (1813–75), a specialist in court scenes. “Indian

Lewis” arrived in India in 1839, two years before older brother John Frederick Lewis (“Spanish

Lewis,” 1804–76) settled in Cairo.69 For the next ten years Frederick Christian Lewis moved

from princely court to princely court, memorializing durbars and grand occasions. Lewis

benefited from the transitional circumstances of Indian princes, many of whom sought to boost

their political and social standing by redecorating their castles with European furnishings and

68. Archer and Lightbrown, 107.

69. Frederick Christian studied under his father, engraver Frederick Christian Lewis (1779–1856), as well
as celebrated portraitist Sir Thomas Lawrence. A Third brother, engraver Charles George Lewis (1808–
1880) was known as “Swiss Lewis.”

235
paintings.70 Lewis was just the man, having trained under the celebrated portraitist Sir Thomas

Lawrence. Not surprisingly, Lewis earned his money by flattering his subjects: the rulers, their

many attendants and the British Residency agents. 71

James Fergusson and William Carpenter

The most impressive and distinctive images of India produced in the 1840s and 1850s

were the meticulously rendered architectural albums of James Fergusson (1808–86), later an

important source for the American Edwin Lord Weeks. After devoting limited but apparently

useful time sharpening his business acumen at the Calcutta mercantile firm of Fairlie, Fergusson

& Co., James Fergusson spent ten years building a fortune as an indigo planter in Bengal.

Armed with a camera lucida, Fergusson spent his retirement redefining himself as an

architectural historian and critic. Although he had no formal artistic training, Fergusson was an

expert draftsman. Determined to establish a firm scientific basis for the study of Indian

architecture, he explored India from one end to the other on camelback, taking meticulous notes,

precise measurements and in situ drawings. From these early efforts he published in 1845

Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India.

Fergusson provided a horde of new information grounded in meticulous, objective

observation and impartial analysis, yet accessible to a wide readership. Although he was not

willing to manipulate his views to achieve what the Daniells termed "pleasing artistic

70. Archer and Lightbrown, 133–34.

71. He returned to India again from 1851 to 1855 and from 1863 to 1866.

236
compositions," to engage a broad audience he purposefully presented his images in familiar

visual terms: "in treating of a subject so new and unfamiliar to most people, I conceived that the

best mode of making it intelligible would be to place a general view of the whole subject before

them in a picturesque, and consequently, most easily understood form."72

For good reason, then, Fergusson titled his next book Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient

Architecture in Hindostan (1848; Figure 6-22). The book transformed extensive on-site sketches

and notes into a scholarly treatise on Indian history and architectural style. By invoking the

Picturesque Fergusson immediately associated his work with a history of visual investigations of

India, and himself with a long line of intrepid artist-adventurers such as William Hodges and the

Daniells. Though he adamantly maintained that his pictures were more "correct" than any that

had preceded them, he also recognized that the Picturesque was the appropriate framework

within which to situate even a rigorously scientific architectural survey.

In this sense Fergusson positioned his work within the very lineage he found constricting

and often misleading. According to art historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta, the Picturesque as a

mode of visualizing India was accepted, stable, and virtually inescapable:

From a filter, it grew into a frame, inscribing itself onto the body of the physical
space and its structures. Fergusson, setting out on his tours in the 1830s, stepped
into these already inscribed and pictured spaces.73

72. Archer and Lightbrown, 127, quoting Fergusson (no further citation).
73. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and
Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 7–8.

237
What distinguished Fergusson was his emphasis on the scientific over the aesthetic.74 His images

suggest a constant tension between accurate representation and pictorial effects, between

emphasizing the coldly scientific and captivating his audience with an imposing scene of

panoramic grandeur. Though his relentless preoccupation with accuracy led him on one hand to

turn to Colonel Colin Mackenzie's (1754–1821) Survey of India, on the other he relinquished

finalizing the details of foreground and background to artist and publisher.75 While it

emphasized architectural precision, Fergusson's brand of "scientific picturesque" adheres to all of

the long-established conventions: ruins looming over small, static figures; scattered stones and

relics; windswept or dense or twisted foliage framing the scene.

By his death in 1886, aside from his reputation for using "a warmth of language" to

defend his theories, Fergusson was recognized as "the most eminent, and certainly the most

copious, of modern writers on the subject of architectural archaeology."76 Even skeptic John

74. Fergusson emphasized that all his views had been taken with the camera lucida, "and never
afterwards touched till put into the hands of the artist here. The foregrounds and the skies are generally
the artist’s, as I seldom put them in on the spot; but in all cases I have insisted on the buildings being
literal transcripts of my sketches;” “At the same time I must acknowledge that Mr. Dibdin has taken every
pains to carry out my instructions . . . and has succeeded in rendering the sketches much more faithfully
than has hitherto been done in any work I am acquainted with; except, perhaps, Daniell’s earlier works,
where the defect is not the want on correct rendering, but an avowed attempt to make pleasing artistic
compositions out of the sketches before they were delivered into the hands of the engravers—a
circumstance which renders it infinitely more valuable than mine as a work of art, but entirely destroys its
value as one of information or instruction. Whatever defects my views may have as pictures, I feel
perfectly certain that they are the most correct delineations of Indian Architecture that have yet been given
to the public.” Archer and Lightbrown, 128, quoting Fergusson, Picturesque Illustrations, preface, iv.
75. Archer and Lightbrown, 127. Mackenzie's geographical survey included detailed sketches of
temples, sculptures and other relics: " . . . the Mackenzie drawings stood (and they still stand) as the most
valuable and earliest pictorial record of Indian antiquities and as a certified source for later scholars."
Guha-Thakurta, 11.
76. J. H. M., "Obituary. Dr. James Fergusson," Academy 715 (16 Jan. 1886): 49. The article listed over a

238
Ruskin recognized Fergusson as a leading architectural historian of the East, quipping that he

would have no reason to turn his attention to Venice if Fergusson were available for the task.77

Fergusson's most formidable achievement was his four-volume A History of Architecture

in All Countries. Volumes one, two and four were published from 1862 to 1867; a decade later

volume three appeared as History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (1876; Figure 6-24), a "still

indispensable" reference for Mildred Archer in 1982.78 With its 394 illustrations (many from

photographs culled from 3,000 in the author's collection), this work was a particular touchstone

for Edwin Lord Weeks. He quotes from it extensively and cites it seven times in his 1896 book

From the Black Sea Through Persia and India.79

Clearly, Weeks was persuaded by Fergusson's substantive arguments. Weeks defers to

Fergusson's interpretations of individual monuments, Indian history and chronology, as well as to

dozen additional titles on architecture penned by Fergusson, some in multiple volumes.

77. "Through these books Fergusson had by the early 1850s made a name for himself as one of the
leading architectural historians, at least of the East. Indeed, John Ruskin wrote to his father on 18
February 1852, ‘If Fergusson and [Charles] Cockerell were both at work in Venice, I should not be; but
the one works in India, the other in Greece,’ " John Lewis Bradley, ed., Ruskin's Letters from Venice,
1851–1852 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 185; David Boyd Haycock, “Fergusson, James
(1808–1886),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), citing Fergusson's obituary in The Athenaeum (16 Jan. 1886),
109.
78. Archer and Lightbrown, 152.
79. James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London: John Murray, 1876), vii. In
his book From the Black Sea Through Persia and India, Weeks refers to Fergusson's History of Indian
and Eastern Architecture numerous times: describing the palace at Oudeypore (Weeks, 259; Fergusson,
476); the palace of Rana Khoumbou in Chitor (Weeks, 300; Fergusson, 476); "the high-caste Hindoo is
almost always incapable of bad taste" (Weeks, 302; Fergusson, 475); Guzerat (Weeks, 313; Fergusson,
526 and following); on the Taj Mahal (Weeks, 322; Fergusson, 570, 599); dimensions of the Dewan-i-
Khas (Weeks, 326; Fergusson, 594). Used for comparisons were From the Black Sea (1896) and History
of Indian Architecture (1876).

239
his opinions on the soundness of Indian aesthetic tastes and the merits of Indian versus classical

civilization. For example, Weeks supplemented his own assessment of the Great Tower of

Victory, "the principal landmark of Chitor," with an observation from Fergusson:

. . . according to Ferguson [sic] "it is a pillar of victory, like that of Trajan at

Rome, but in infinitely better taste as an architectural object than the Roman
example." If I remember rightly, Fergusson says somewhere that "the high-caste
Hindoo is almost incapable of bad taste."

Weeks again alluded to the "latest treatises" of Fergusson and Alexander Cunningham (1814–

93), British archaeologist, army engineer and director of the Archaeological Survey of India,

when appreciatively describing the architecture of the province of Guzerat:

. . . the latest treatises show an increasing respect and admiration for works which
combine such wonderfully decorative qualities with dignity and often with sound
taste. 80

Fergusson's writings and drawings provided Edwin Weeks with a readily adaptable model for

developing a textual and visual interpretation of India, as well as a recognized scholarly opinion

on the aesthetic merits of Indian architecture and a comparative, historical framework in which

to situate it.

In Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art, Partha Mitter

argues that Fergusson's attentiveness to detail and deep feeling for Indian architecture,

particularly of the Islamic period, was no guarantor of his cultural understanding. His was a

confidence based on innocence, even ignorance, for his ostensibly neutral and scientific

descriptions were inevitably cast against the avowed supremacy of Greek and Roman

80. Weeks, From the Black Sea, 301–02, 313.

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architecture, though certain elements of that art—as well as contemporary European

architecture—he targeted for severe criticism. Perhaps more tellingly, Mitter contends, the art

historical framework that Fergusson developed for India reversed the accepted theories of

Western art that posited progress from simple to complex: [Fergusson] "presented a vivid picture

of how the history of Indian architecture expressed itself only through a continuous decline as

opposed to constant progress."81

Undeniably, Fergusson's claim that "It cannot of course be for one moment contended

that India ever reached the intellectual supremacy of Greece, or the moral greatness of Rome"

reflects the classical education (and indoctrination) of the typical Victorian man of letters.

However, as Mitter recognizes, Fergusson was often ambivalent in his categorical assessments.

On one hand he stated that India was without question "on a lower step of the ladder;" on the

other he continued "her arts are more original and more varied, and her forms of civilization

present an ever changing variety, such as are nowhere else to be found." Drawing on these

oppositions, Fergusson was a tireless advocate and scholar of Indian architecture who felt that it

had much to offer Western practice:

Those who have an opportunity of seeing what perfect buildings the ignorant
uneducated natives of India are now producing, will easily understand how
success may be achieved, while those who observe what failures the best educated
and most talented architects in Europe are constantly perpetrating, may, by a study
of Indian models, easily see why this must inevitably be the result. It is only in
India that the two systems can now be seen practised side by side—the educated
and intellectual European always failing because his principles are wrong, the

81. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), 263.

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 feeble and uneducated native as inevitably succeeding because his principles are
right. 82

James Fergusson's insistence on exactitude, measured and systematic insights, reliance on

first-hand field observation, pioneering application of photography to the study of architecture,

comprehensive knowledge, and forthright presentation of materials and ideas were important

touchstones for Edwin Lord Weeks. Weeks' close engagement with Fergusson, substantively and

methodologically, places the American artist squarely at the late Victorian end of the long,

interwoven trajectory of travel, science, art and the Indian Picturesque.

Following Fergusson's Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India (1845) and

Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan (1848) only one professional

British artist produced notable work on India prior to the 1857 rebellion. Trained by the Royal

Academy, William Carpenter (1818–99), son of portraitist Margaret Sarah Geddes and British

Museum Keeper of Prints and Drawings William Hookham Carpenter, toured India from 1850 to

1857. Often traveling in lavish Indian dress, Carpenter traversed the subcontinent, from Calcutta

to Bombay and Ceylon, then northwest to Rajasthan, Delhi, Kashmir, Lahore and to Afghanistan

with the Punjab Irregular Force.83

The Indian traveling costume suggests that Carpenter was more interested than most

Europeans in absorbing and probing Indian culture. His paintings bear this out by departing

from the typical picturesque fare. Lively, curious and affectionate, Carpenter's paintings tend to

82. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, 4, 5.

83. Archer and Lightbrown, 108–09, 138.

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the romantic yet evoke the colorful settings and individual characters of his subjects. His images

suggest a genuine interest in the personalities of his royal sitters, the daily lives of the Indian

people, the intricacies of local ceremony, and the distinctiveness of costume. Like those of

Fergusson, Carpenter's scenes of architectural monuments and city life strive for accuracy, yet

there is nothing stilted, remote or contrived about them. For example, Gateway of the palace at

Indore (1852; Figure 6-25) employs movement and light to overcome the constraints of its

medium (pencil and watercolor) and small size (13.8 x 9.7 inches). This view is of the main

square before the gateway, with houses and shops to the right and a thronging crowd that parts

for the maharaja's sawari or retinue of horsemen and royal elephants. Despite the painting's

modest size, it conveys a sense of imposing scale. With its royal procession, careful attention to

architectural detail and particular regard to shimmering, near-blinding full sunlight, Carpenter's

work anticipates the interests of Edwin Lord Weeks in India explored more fully in the next

chapter.84

84. Carpenter returned to England in 1856, but ten years later was living in Boston; Edwin Weeks would
have been in his teens in the 1860s, and very possibly may have known of Carpenter and his work. To
date there is no evidence of this possible acquaintance. See accompanying text, Gateway of the Palace at
Indore, V&A Search the Collections, Victorian and Albert Museum, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/
O108185/painting-gateway-of-the-palace-at/. After his return to England, Carpenter exhibited Indian
scenes at the Royal Academy 1857 and 1866; the Illustrated London News featured a number of his
watercolors. Decades later, in 1881, the South Kensington Museum exhibited 274 of his paintings in its
Indian Section. "They will be found of great value and interest to visitors, not only as representing the
scenery and architecture of the country, but also as illustrating the daily life of the native inhabitants, and
the uses of many of the implements, vessels, personal decorations, &c. comprised in the collection of
examples of the industrial arts of India." Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on
Education, South Kensington, Catalogue of the Water-Colour Drawings of Indian Views, Groups, &c.
executed and lent for exhibition in the South Kensington Museum by William Carpenter, Esq., (London:
George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1881), preface.

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British Artists in India after 1857

After the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (variously, the Mutiny, the Revolt, the Sepoy

Rebellion, the First War of Independence), professional British artists demonstrated a flurry of

renewed interest in India. This was almost exclusively focused on recording the scenes of war

and the heroics of the British, and not on cultural or figural subjects that might suggest sympathy

with the genuine and deeply felt discontent of the population. There remained no political or

emotional space for colorful, vibrant images such as those painted not long before by William

Carpenter.

Rather, the aftermath of the rebellion produced in England emotionally-charged works

such as Henry Nelson O'Neil's Eastward Ho! August, 1857 (1857; Figure 6-26), Home Again

(1858) and Joseph Noël Paton's fictitious but sensational In Memoriam (Figure 6-27).85 The

"singularly taking and meritorious" Eastward Ho! was inspired by the artist having seen an

embarkation of troops at Gravesend, bound for India.86 Home Again was the sentimental, and

somewhat inevitable, pendant. Paton's In Memoriam, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858,

depicts a group of British women and children of Cawnpore huddled against the oncoming

slaughter. Paton declined to depict the women as they no doubt really appeared after three weeks

of relentless siege, lack of water, constant shelling, disease and temperatures over 110 degrees.

Instead, Paton's women are well-clothed and fairly robust. Conceding that the sepoys originally

85. For a well considered analysis see Alison Blunt, "Embodying war: British women and domestic
defilement in the Indian 'Mutiny', 1857–8," Journal of Historical Geography 26, no. 3 (2000): 403–28.
86. "Mr. Henry Nelson O'Neil, A.R.A.," Athenaeum 2734 (20 Mar. 1880): 384.

244
pounding down the stairs represented a potential violation "too excruciating" for viewers, Paton

replaced them with Highlanders coming to the rescue. Even the cleaned up version, however

fictionalized, lent a searing image to contemporary newspaper accounts.

Perhaps equally shocking to the national conscience were the revelations of British

cruelties perpetrated in retaliation for the rebellious acts.87 These were brought home forcefully

by photographs such as Felice Beato's infamous Interior of the Secundra Bagh after the

Slaughter of 2,000 Rebels by the 93rd Highlanders and 4th Punjab Regiment. First Attack of Sir

Colin Campbell in November, 1857, Lucknow (March or April, 1858; Figure 6-28). The rage that

sustained the massacre at Secundra Bagh, a palace near Lucknow, was the memory of the

incident at Kanpur. Almost as chilling was Beato's re-staging of the scene four or five months

after the event, when he deftly positioned a riderless horse and four figures against a background

of a crumbling, bullet-ridden façade and a foreground of disinterred, scattered skulls and bones.88

Photography had begun to usurp painting as the means to visualize history, although with its own

set of mediations and fictions.

British painters did not exactly leap at the chance to record the scenes of reputed Indian

mutiny and massacre "on the spot." Eventually the lithographers Day & Son saw a profitable

angle in the rebellion, and sent famed Crimean War artist William Simpson (1823–99) to

capitalize on it. Convinced that “The public were interested in the cause of the Mutiny, and in

87. Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 208.
88. David Harris, "Topography and Memory: Felice Beato's Photographs of India, 1858–1859," in Vidya
Dehijia, India Though the Lens, Photography 1840–1911 (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur
M. Sackler Gallery, 2000, reprinted 2006), 125–26, 146 plate 58.

245
everything connected with the people of India. More interest had been excited in England about

that country than had ever existed before,” Simpson planned an ambitious, large-scale

commemorative book featuring the scenes of conflict, consciously modeled on the earlier work

of the Daniells and David Roberts whose visions of the "East" were still predominant in the

1860s.89 For over three years he toured India, crossing into Tibet, the Himalayas, Kashmir, and

Ceylon. Upon his return to England in 1862, he consulted with James Fergusson on the

particulars of architectural details to be depicted. Simpson's dedication to architectural precision

and his debt to British predecessors such as the Daniells may be seen in images such as Buddhist

vihara cave, Ajanta (1862; Figure 6-29), while others like Worship of the Devi at Kothi, near

Chini (1860; Figure 6-30) demonstrate Simpson's lively individualism at work within the context

of an established tradition. Although the ultimate publication run fell far short of Simpson's

goals, his project and approach demonstrates the marked hold that the ideals of the Picturesque

had on the British vision of India, even well into the 1860s.90

89. William Simpson, The Autobiography of William Simpson, R.I., ed. George Eyre-Todd (London: T.
Fisher Unwin, 1903), 91. Simpson arrived in India in October 1859 to join the party of Lord Canning,
governor-general, on a tour of the scenes of the mutiny. He wrote of his preparations: “It was determined
that we should take as a model for size the large work of Daniel [sic] Roberts on the Holy Land and
Egypt. This had two hundred and fifty plates, and was published in four volumes, folio. But owing to the
progress of lithography it was determined that the new work should be in colour, and that the pictures
should be more or less reproductions of the originals,” 91; “I also spent a considerable time in the library
of the India House, then in Leadenhall Street, looking over books about India, such as Daniels’ [sic], to
see what had been already done, and to get hints as to places I ought to visit,” 92. The Queen gave
permission that the book be dedicated to her (“a peculiar mark of confidence”), 92.
90. Studying the works of the Daniells, Simpson planned a project to rival theirs in scope and ambition,
to contain 250 prints. After returning to Lincoln’s Inns Fields, he worked for four years on the project,
with 250 completed drawings. The plan fell apart when Day and Son went bankrupt and Simpson’s
drawings were sold off to liquidate the assets of the enterprise. Simpson received nothing for seven years
of work. He was forced to published a much shortened, and poorly produced, version of the book with

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 With traits seemingly the polar opposite of those exhibited by war-hardened William

Simpson, in the following decade Victorian nonsense poet and landscapist Edward Lear (1812–

88) sketched his way across India as the guest of Thomas Baring, Lord Northbrook. Lear spent

more than a year in the sub-continent, producing a prodigious number of watercolors entirely in

the picturesque tradition. The sickly Lear was "cross, unwell and wretched" for most of the

journey. He complained in his journals incessantly about the fuss of viceregal life, the lateness

of his morning tea, the rawness of his duck, the hideousness of the jungle, and the bumpiness of

the garry.91 However, he anticipated a hefty profit for his troubles. In the tradition of earlier

professional British artists, Lear drummed up a thousand pounds worth of commissions before

embarking on his trip.

After a few false starts, Lear and his trusted servant Giorgio Kokali arrived in Bombay in

November 1873. The pair made their way across India by train, sedan chair, cart and palanquin,

always to the well-recorded detriment of Lear’s spine and backsides. Despite a perpetual litany

of complaints and a constancy of ailments minutely recorded in his diary, Lear produced over

two thousand drawings on his trip, all in watercolor and sepia over graphite pencil.92

only 50 chromolithographs. Tillotson, 68.

91. An arduous journey for one in delicate health, Lear was not reticent to record his trials: "health all
wrong," "Impossible to get any tea before 7.30, so useless to go out," "Cross, unwell and wretched." Ray
Murphy, ed., Edward Lear's Indian Journal (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1955), 51.
92. Vidya Dehejia, Impossible Picturesqueness: Edward Lear's Indian Watercolors, 1873–1875 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 2. More than half of these are what Lear termed “scraps”, small
drawings with wash, three by six inches. Even the largest measures only about fourteen by twenty-two
inches. From these Lear worked up for sale some finished watercolors and a few oils.

247
 Often Lear likened the landscape of India to that of Europe, frequently to England, and

was primed to view India through the eyes of his predecessors:

How well I remember the views of Benares by Daniell R.A.; pallid, gray, sad,
solemn. I had always supposed this place a melancholy, or at least a staid and
soberly-coloured spot, a gray record of bygone days. Instead, I find it one of the
most abundantly bruyant, and startlingly radiant of places full of bustle and
movement. Constantinople or Naples are simply dull and quiet by comparison.93

Indeed, Thomas Daniells’ Dasashvamedh Ghat, At Benares on the Ganges (1795; Figure 6-31)

could hardly be called exuberant. Its warm tans, soft greens, pale grays and gentle sunlight

suggest very early morning, and lend a classical forbearance to the scene. With its rapid and

wonderfully fine strokes, Lear's softer and more informal Bathing Ghat at Benares (1873; Figure

6-32) is lively though still subdued. Infused with golden sunlight, soft pinks, shimmering

reflections, roughed in shadows and scribbled figures, it has more movement and vitality than

Daniells' print. But it is a small and quickly executed impression. Though some of Lear’s earlier

works demonstrate a bold use of color, few of his finished paintings of India (Kanchenjunga

from Darjeeling, for example; Figure 6-33) retain the spontaneity or immediacy of his sketches.94

If with his scene of Benares Lear favored the quick impression over more studied

precision, he confidently adopted the Daniells' strongly diagonal composition, distant view and

muted coloring. Although occasionally Lear captured a more bustling sense of town life in

93. Edward Lear, 14 December 1873, in Murphy, 46.

94. This version of Kanchenjunga (47 1/8 x 72 inches) is in the collection of the Yale Center for British
Art. Lear painted a larger version (48 x 112 inches) for Lady Louisa Ashburton. Dehejia, Impossible
Picturesqueness, 31.

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works such as Street in the Hindoo town of Bhurtpoor, few of his hundreds of drawings of India

stray very far from the overriding framework of the Picturesque that characterizes Bathing ghat

at Benares.

Edward Lear's great friend, Lord Northbrook, was also a patron of another British artist

working in India, John Griffiths (1837–1918). Griffiths, a lifelong friend and collaborator of

Lockwood Kipling, taught for thirty years at the Sir Jamsetji Jimsethai School of Art in Bombay.

Weeks, who knew of Griffiths in his capacity as school director, called him "an artist of rare

ability."95 Very little has been written about Griffiths' paintings, though a London gallery

exhibition catalog of 1980 noted that "His importance for us is that he was the only truly

Victorian painter—lying somewhere between Richard Dadd and Ford Madox Brown—to have

lived and worked in India."96

As may be seen in The Mid-day Sun—Camels Before a Shrine in Western India (1868;

Figure 6-34); A Drink by the Way, a Street Scene in Bombay (1876; Figure 6-35); and The Temple

Steps (1893; Figure 6-36); Griffiths departed from the British picturesque tradition in favor of a

more personal style and intimate subject matter that merged the brilliant coloring of William

Holman Hunt and the mid-century watercolorist's precision of John F. Lewis with a touch of the

95. Weeks, "Notes on Indian Art," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 91, no. 544 (Sept. 1895): 567–85 at
580.
96. Eyre and Hobhouse, John Griffiths (1837–1918): The rediscovery of an important artist working in
Victorian Bombay (London: Eyre and Hobhouse, 1980). Griffiths studied at the National Art Training
School (later the Royal College of Art), affiliated with the new South Kensington Museum. His career
was spent largely in Bombay where he eventually became superintendent of the Bombay School of Art.
His most important project was the exploration and copying of the paintings in the rock-cut temples at
Ajanta.

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classicism of Edward Poynter. Griffiths' paintings bring forth the harsh light of India and its

clear color, with observation telling and minute, down to the wrinkled knees of the camels and

the almost caricatured, if substantial, figures. However, despite routinely exhibiting at the Royal

Academy from 1869 to 1904, Griffiths' reputation rested on his dedication to teaching rather than

his individualized vision of contemporary India.

As this overview demonstrates, when Val Prinsep arrived in India in 1877 to prepare for

his royal commission to commemorate the Queen's newly bestowed title of Empress, India was

hardly "a country artistically unknown," but as far as contemporary British artists were

concerned it had indeed "been of late years sadly neglected." Where British artists had once

eagerly surmounted the trials of a distant journey, considerable expense, often deleterious

climate, military demands and the constant jostle for commissions, few in the last quarter of the

nineteenth century were willing to venture. Any lingering romance once felt by the British

public had faded precipitously after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, drying up the market for

Indian subjects. Even general curiosity about the scenes of gruesome violence and mass death

associated with the rebellion could not resuscitate the field, a bitter surprise even to well-known

war artist William Simpson and his publishers. As the century wore on India faded from the

imaginations of British painters, leading Pratapaditya Pal and Vidya Dehijia to observe in From

Merchants to Emperors, British Artists and India, 1757-1930 that ". . . one would be hard

pressed to name even half a dozen eminent artists who succumbed to the lure of India during the

last century of British rule in the subcontinent.”97

97. Pal and Dehijia, 13; “A major contributing factor was the tragic events of 1857 which dramatically

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 Nonetheless, India maintained a high visual presence in Victorian Britain, but one defined

primarily by amateur artists, illustrators and photographers. If the conventions of the Picturesque

finally had loosened their hold on painters, as the work of William Carpenter suggests, by the

1870s those conventions had leaped to the new medium of photography.98 This visual transition

is particularly notable in the work of one of the foremost British commercial photographers

working in India, Samuel Bourne (1834-1912), who as a young man joined forces with the more

seasoned Charles Shepherd to establish a photography studio at Simla, the summer capital of the

British Raj.99 The firm enjoyed a brisk portrait business, but became especially well known for

its highly-praised landscape views and photographic expeditions to remote areas. In short order,

distributors were signed up to sell photographs in major cities throughout India as well as in

London and Paris, permitting the firm to expand its studios and sales outlets to Calcutta (1867)

and Bombay (1870).100 One of the very last things Edward Lear did before departing India in

altered the British attitude toward India. India was no longer a mysterious and unfamiliar country; the
British public’s curiosity had been well satisfied. With the widening social gulf between the rulers and
the ruled, there was a marked decline in interest in the country’s peoples and cultures. Fewer professional
artists were inspired to visit India after it officially formed a part of the empire where the sun never set.”
Pal and Dehijia, 16.
98. Edwin Weeks was an avid photographer who took portable cameras with him on his trips through
India and Persia. None of his photographs is known.
99. Taking visualization of India in a different, and highly suspect, ethnographic direction were John
Forbes Watson and John William Kaye, whose eight-volume People of India (1868–75) used hundreds of
photographs of Indian "types," occupations and family groups to attempt to methodically document
Indian society. Watson and Kaye, ed., The People of India. A Series of Photographic Illustrations, with
Descriptive Letterpress, of the Races and Tribes of Hindustan, 8 vols. (London: India Museum; Wm. H.
Allen and Company, 1868–75).
100. James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 48.

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January 1875 was to acquire a set of 120 Samuel and Bourne photographs.101

In particular, Bourne's technique and compositional skills were considered remarkable as

were his extraordinary documentary excursions to the western Himalayas and to sites in

Northern India of British military encampments and famous battles. Bourne's photographs were

included in a number of popular, academic and scientific exhibitions where they were admired as

much for their technical qualities as for the spirit of adventurous exploration that they

represented. In 1867 the British Journal of Photography recognized Bourne's accomplishments

by publishing a series of his articles describing his arduous photographic expeditions through

India.102

Yet images like View on Dal Canal Srinagar, Kashmir (1866) demonstrate that Bourne's

compositional approach was firmly rooted in the Picturesque, cementing what the British already

knew, or thought they knew, about much of South Asia.103 Bourne simply led viewers down a

path carved out by Gilpin almost a century earlier, now made more accessible by portable

technology worthy of progressive Victorian interests.

101. "Wrote to Evelyn Baring, telling him I had drawn on the Viceroy for £200 and why: also to the
Viceroy telling him of my decision to go back, which I know I have been in the right to make. Got my
120 photographs firm Shepherd & Bourne, and paid £24. Got my eighth hundred cashed at the Treasury
and have taken my two places to Brindisi. So much, therefore is decided. I go," Murphy, Edward Lear's
Indian Journal, 235.
102. Despite the nascent state of photography, one viewer pronounced "These are pictures not to be
doubled up in a coarse scrap-book, but framed for the adornment of the drawing-room." Ryan, 48 quoting
an anonymous correspondent to the British Journal of Photography 16 (1869): 571.
103. Ryan, 49.

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 The long association of the Picturesque with India is curious, given the many

interventions in the broader culture of artistic style, popular taste, social issues and changing

technology. Admittedly, the picturesque ideal, at least initially, had nothing to do with India or

ideology. Its principles were based on the perceived aesthetic qualities of roughness and variety

of form which provided interest for the viewer. The frame of reference was visual rather than

political, with a touch of improving sentimentality but not with overtures of control. In a sense,

it is an art of the abstract, more preoccupied with constructing pattern from the landscape and the

objects in it than with the human enterprises the land supports.104 The Picturesque was a kind of

myth-making that largely ignored social and political realities; it was a rural idyll devoid of

conflict, a pleasant diversion for the middle and upper classes, wherein may lie its most powerful

political statement.

Subject is almost always privileged over style when considering how Orientalist painting

sustained colonialist objectives, but the Picturesque may be the exception to the general rule.

The ideals of the Picturesque and those of empire matured in parallel. In India their applications

intertwined, called out specifically by William Hodges and the Daniells, who clearly saw the the

motives of empire in their writings and their images of India. Arguably, it was precisely because

the rules of the Picturesque were tightly prescribed that they dominated images of India long

after they faded in England. The artist was not only free to impose his will upon his subject, the

landscape, he was also required to do so to meet successfully the artificial constructs of the

Picturesque. To discard or rearrange reality in order to construct a decidedly British vision has

104. Tillotson, 27.

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obvious political parallels; the very idea of empire is embedded in the vision of controlled

space.105 The coherence and persistence of these visual habits prompted James R. Ryan to

observe in Picturing Empire:

What is interesting then is the way in which British landscape photographers

of the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s disguised their dependence on pictorial
convention in order to promote photography as an objective record of sight,
in the process reinscribing imperial landscape as a natural way of seeing.106

Even while Samuel Bourne frequently framed his objectives in aesthetic terms, for

example describing his trip to Kashmir "in search of the picturesque" and to the remote source of

the Ganges as "this holy and not altogether unpicturesque object," the wide dissemination of

thousands of Bourne's prints over decades has undeniable associations with empire.107 Bourne's

efforts paralleled Britain's to secure political and commercial control over the subcontinent. He

founded his practice in the summer capital of the Raj, wrote in his journal articles from an

indisputably colonialist perspective and, like William Simpson and others, deliberately set out to

document politically-charged territories.108 Bourne's picturesque was at once loyal to the

eighteenth century ideal and fully complicit in the goals of empire, beguiling the viewer with

105. See W. J. T. Mitchell, "Imperial Landscape" in Landscape and Power, 2nd ed. (Chicago, London:
University of Chicago Press, 2002), 5–34.
106. Ryan, 47.
107. Gary D. Simpson, "Photographer of the Picturesque: Samuel Bourne," India Through the Lens,
Photography 1840–1911, Vidya Dehejia (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2006), 163 quoting Bourne, "Ten Weeks with the Camera in the
Himalayas," British Journal of Photography (1 February 1864): 50 and "Narrative of a Photographic
Journey to Kashmir (Cashmere) and Adjacent Districts," British Journal of Photography (18 March
1870): 126; and 174.
108. Simpson, 174.

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images of India engagingly exotic yet hauntingly familiar.109

Of course, there were Western photographers in India other than Samuel Bourne and

Shepherd, as well as celebrated Indian photographers like Lala Deen Dayal, many of whom were

far more intent on conveying with candor and compassion the grim realities of Indian life under

the British. The foregoing brief overview of British artists was not intended to be

comprehensive; such a survey has been covered far more thoroughly and no doubt more cogently

by other scholars. Rather, to contradict Val Prinsep, the aim was to highlight the long visual

tradition that shaped Western perceptions of India. Against this remarkably uniform British

tradition Edwin Lord Weeks' paintings of Indian life and culture, at once integrative and ground-

breaking, emerge as all the more novel.

109. " . . . the colonial photographic picturesque stands at an aesthetic crossroads: it claims to
represent indexical truth (Bourne notes the pleasures of photographing the highest peaks in India) and yet
signals the forms of 'home.' " Chaudhary, 150.

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 Chapter Seven

An American Vision: India at the Paris Salon

Overwhelmed and inspired by his first trip to India in 1882, for the next dozen years

Edwin Lord Weeks began to focus almost exclusively on paintings of its culture and people. In

conception and execution these works both continued and challenged the British and French

traditions that had defined the Western vision of India for over a century. Following a brief

overview of Edwin Lord Weeks' three journeys to India, the balance of this chapter considers the

artist's Indian-themed paintings submitted to the annual official exhibitions of the Académie des

Beaux-Arts in Paris ("Paris Salon"). Although Weeks also contributed works to the Paris Salon

related to other places and subjects, his images of the architecture and life of India staked out

new artistic territory, cemented his international reputation, and define his achievements as an

artist even today.

The discussion introduces new topics and approaches to the analysis of Weeks' paintings.

Although it is by no means exhaustive, the intent is to illustrate how Weeks' paintings may be

dissected and contextualized in order to enrich the composite understanding of the artist and his

work. For example, it is well known that Weeks was familiar with the writings of early modern

European travelers to India and other historical sources. Some of those materials were mined for

excepts that relate to, and illuminate, particular paintings.

How viewers perceived the paintings as they hung on the walls of the Salons, and how

they might have been compared to other Orientalist works in the same exhibition are likewise

considered. Size, composition and manipulation of space and perspective are discussed in terms

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of viewer experience and compared to the work of contemporaries such as Julius Stewart and the

Russian war-artist, Vasili Vereshchagin.

Contrary to the modern tendency to associate Orientalist painters with academic attitudes

and practices, many including Weeks viewed their efforts as thoroughly progressive, both

intellectually and technically. Along these lines, investigating Weeks' preoccupation with the

effects of intense sunlight, the "glare effect," connects him to broader nineteenth-century artists'

investigations into optics and dissolution of form. How this interest relates to similar concerns

expressed in the works of William Lamb Picknell, Mariano Fortuny, John Singer Sargent and

James McNeill Whistler is also considered.

Modern scholars typically constrict and isolate the themes of Orientalist paintings to their

most obvious subjects or, in the opposite extreme, aggregate them into a West versus East

paradigm. Seldom are they linked to contemporary topics beyond a broad imperialist statement.

At various points this section suggests how Weeks' paintings speak to contemporary debates,

such as architectural preservation and Anglo-Russian relations.

In short, the major works of Edwin Lord Weeks were engagingly topical, stimulating,

rich in detail, colorful and calculated, both painterly and precise. At the Paris Salons, it was

India as it had never been seen before.

Travels in India

Though Edwin Lord Weeks is best known for his paintings of India, he spent less time

there than is commonly believed. Newspaper sources indicate that had been planning to visit

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India for at least five years prior to his arrival in Bombay in the autumn of 1882.1 Even before

his departure Weeks was already keenly focused on the architecture of northern India and the

everyday life of its inhabitants, writing to George Corliss of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine

Arts:

It happens unfortunately that I am very much occupied at this moment, as we

(Mrs. Weeks and myself) are to sail to Bombay via Marseilles in a few days, and
we are in the midst of packing. I intend to pass some months in studying northern
India, its type of architecture particularly and the life in its cities . . . . 2

Shortly thereafter Weeks and the ever-intrepid Fannie joined the Italian mail steamer S.S.

Singapore in Marseilles and set sail for India. Accompanied by twenty-three other passengers,

cargo ranging from cases of vermouth to packages of buttons, and an additional twenty-two

unnamed "deck passengers" picked up in Aden, they arrived in Bombay harbor on October 17th.3

Little is known of the pair's day-to-day itinerary while in India. However, their departure may be

dated to May 1, 1883 when the artist and his wife reboarded the Singapore for their journey

home from Bombay.4

1. “E.C. Weeks [sic] proposes to sail for India in about three weeks, for two or three years
absence," "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, 8 February 1877, 6. Subsequently the trip was
canceled, "Art and Artists," 15 Feb. 1877, 6 col. 2.
2. Edwin Lord Weeks to George Corliss, 6 September 1882, Paris, (copy) Box 7, File 2, The Art of
Edwin Lord Weeks, Jan.–Feb. 1976, Art Gallery Exhibition Files, 1941–2004, UA 9/3/1, Milne Special
Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, New Hampshire, USA.
(Original letter is in the archives of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.)
3. "S.S. Singapore . . .," Times of India, 19 October 1882, 3.
4. "Homeward Mail," Times of India, 20 April 1883, 3. Also Weeks to George Corliss, 10 May 1883,
"Steamer 'Singapore' " in the Red Sea, (copy) Box 7, File 2, The Art of Edwin Lord Weeks, Art Gallery
Exhibition Files, 1941–2004, UA 9/3/1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New
Hampshire Library, Durham, New Hampshire, USA. (Original letter is in the archives of the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts.) September found Weeks still in Paris, as documented by two letters to George

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 Following this introductory visit of six and a half months Weeks and his wife did not

return to India until October of 1886, this time for a stay of five months.5 There is no record of

their daily movements around the country except a few details that can be correlated by sketches,

paintings and the occasional letter. The cragged scrawl of one of Weeks' letters to Bostonian

Alexander Twombly, penned December 18th on the way to Jodhpur, conveys the rattle and roll of

the train compartment through the countryside more directly than Weeks' description. Close

reading of Weeks' essays for Harper's New Monthly Magazine offers a few clues about

chronology, yet his articles often draw from more than one trip to the described locale, making it

difficult to associate places with specific dates. Their second Indian journey concluded in late

winter; the couple sailed for Marseilles aboard the P. & O. steamer S.S. Kaiser-i-Hind on March

4th, 1887.6

Weeks' final trip to India via Persia in 1892, undertaken with the English writer and art

critic Theodore Child, is the best documented. In anticipation of the trip in May 1892 Weeks

renewed his passport for himself and a "manservant."7 Not one to while away the hours at home

alone, Fannie planned to leave in August for an extended visit to her American relatives,

presumably to stay for at least a time with Weeks' sister in South Berwick, Maine.8 Sailing mid-

Corliss in the University of New Hampshire files.

5. "The Week's French Gossip," New York Times, 26 Sept. 1886, 1.
6. "Homeward Mail," Times of India, 4 February 1887, 5.
7. National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. Passport Applications, Emergency Passport
Applications (Issued Abroad), 1877-1907, Collection Number: ARC Identifier 1187503/MLR Number
A1 515, NARA Series M1834, Roll 7, Volume 9, Edwin Lord Weeks.
8. Fannie arrived "the last of August" to stay with relatives, presumably in South Berwick, Maine, as
noted in a copy of a letter from Burton W. F. Trafton, Jr. to Susan C. Faxon, 14 November 1975. Trafton's

259
July for Constantinople on the Camboge [or possibly, Cambodge], Weeks and Child arrived in

Trebizond on July 22, 1892. Accompanied by a small, evolving band of guides, cooks and

soldiers of varying reliability, from there they journeyed generally southward on horseback along

the ancient caravan routes. By early November they had survived treacherous mountain passes,

thieves, alternately freezing and burning temperatures, flea-infested caravansaries and cholera to

reach Erzurum ("Erzeroum"), Khoy ("Khoi"), Tabriz, Tehran, and Isfahan ("Ispahan"). It was

near Isfahan that Child suffered a relapse and died of typhoid before Weeks could get him

medical attention.9 After burying Child in Julfa, Weeks continued on to Shiraz thence to coastal

Bushehr ("Bushire") where he caught a steamer to Karachi ("Kurrachee").

Although Weeks' From the Black Sea Through Persia and India chronicles each step of

the often harrowing journey through Persia, the itinerary becomes more vague after Weeks

arrived in Karachi during the first week of December 1892. It is certain that in January he

letter includes an excerpt from a letter of Mary Jewett to Sarah Orne Jewett, dated 29 June 1892, South
Berwick, Maine [Trafton referenced work for Harvard, so perhaps the cited letters are from the "Sarah
Orne Jewett compositions and other papers" at Harvard University]. Some references in Weeks'
published articles suggest that Fannie was with him in India, although she was definitely in Paris to meet
Weeks when he returned there on March 6, 1893. So, Fannie's exact whereabouts during this period
remain a little puzzling.
9. Dr. Mary Bradford of the Presbyterian mission in Julfa attended Weeks and Child when they first
arrived: "One day word reached us that some Americans had arrived in the city, sick of the cholera. I
immediately went to see them and found Mr. Theodore Child, author, and Mr. Edwin Weeks, artist, on a
tour of Persia and India in the interests of Harper's Magazine. They were in miserable lodgings, and they
and their dragoman were all suffering from the cholera. We invited them to occupy the large, airy rooms
of the girls' school, which were turned into a temporary hospital. Mr. Weeks wrote in Harper's Magazine:
'It was to Dr. Bradford's constant care and untiring energy as well as to the devotion of our Armenian
friend (the nurse Yagut) that our party owed their recovery.' Afterwards they proceeded on their journey,
but Mr. Child, whose attack had been very severe, had a relapse with typhoid symptoms and died near
Ispahan." S. G. Wilson, Persia: Western Mission (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication,
1896), 303–4.

260
traveled by train, stopping in Marwar, Jodhpur and Bikaner on his way to Lahore where he spent

several weeks.10 But this sojourn through northern India did not last long, for the diaries of

George A. Lucas, American art dealer and executor of Theodore Child's estate, indicate that

Weeks arrived back in Paris on March 6, 1893.11 Therefore on this final trip Weeks spent a little

over five months traveling through Turkey and Persia and less than two months in India.

The Lure of India: Lost and Found

Inspired by the kaleidoscopic sense of color, light and life in India, after his return from

that first 1882 journey to India Edwin Lord Weeks set about staking and building his reputation

on depicting scenes of Indian life. From 1884 to 1995 eleven of the thirteen contributions he

made to the Paris Salon were paintings of Indian subjects (one was a scene of Persia, one of

Spain). These paintings were the artist's largest, most innovative works, calculated to attract the

attention of juries, critics and patrons. Although Weeks continued to exhibit annually at the

Salon until his death in 1903, in the last years Persian subjects dominated his submissions,

interspersed with a couple of contemporary Parisian scenes (Au Touring Club;—Bois-de-

Boulongne, 1898; Après-midi, de novembre de Paris, 1899). However, it was Weeks' paintings

of India that solidified his international reputation and defined him as a mature artist.

10. Weeks was headed by train to Lahore in late December 1886. Weeks to Twombly, 18 Dec. 1886. In
1893 he spent several weeks in Lahore; "Current Events, Indian," Times of India, 5 May 1894, 3.
11. Lucas recorded: "Note from Weeks saying he had arrived yesterday." March 7, 1893 entry, George
A. Lucas, The Diary of George A. Lucas: An American Art Agent in Paris, 1857-1909, vol. II, transcribed
by Lilian M. C. Randall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 764. Lucas visited Fannie Weeks
on February 11 and learned that her husband was expected on March 4th.

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 Given the years Weeks had invested in Morocco, and the contemporary thematic

countercurrents that emphasized Western urban life, why did Edwin Lord Weeks spend the most

productive years of his career focused on India? There is no single answer. Clearly Weeks found

India endlessly intriguing, a visual and cultural antidote to the gray, industrializing cities of

Europe. Also, scenes of the Orient had sustained immense popularity throughout the later

Victorian era, even as many artists took up themes of modern Western life.

More importantly, at least from a marketing and exhibition standpoint, in the 1880s India

was a fresh subject. French Orientalists' attentions to South Asia had been sporadic. Vasili

Vereshchagin, Russian war artist and Critical Realist, was one of the few European

contemporaries of Weeks to depict India. Vereshchagin had executed huge paintings of India in

the 1870s (for example, The State Entry of the Prince of Wales in Jaipur in 1876; 16.3 x 22.8

feet) but had moved on to Syria and Palestine after a brief return to anti-imperialist Indian

themes in the early 1880s (Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English, 1884).

British artists, who had long held the deepest ties to India, had dismissed it as a suitable subject.

Their predecessors' visualization of India, arising from extensive travel throughout the

subcontinent, invariably cast in terms of past artistic traditions and present political exigencies,

had defined India in the European imagination for well over a century. Yet by the 1880s that

vision was timeworn and virtually abandoned.

Preparing for his 1876 tour of India (to gather material for his commemoration of the

Delhi durbar glorification of imperialism), English artist Valentine Prinsep wrote of "the

lamentable ignorance of India found even in educated circles in England," and that "India has

262
remained almost unknown to the painter."12 This was only six years before Weeks' first visit to

the country. India's slide in the British artistic imagination had been long underway, as Henry

Henderson recognized as early as 1843:

. . . we have heard it asserted frequently that India is no place for the cultivation of
the arts, that it has nothing to interest the painter, that its landscapes are dull and
insipid, its scenery unvarying; and it is affirmed that without adverting to the
difficulty of keeping up any accomplishment at all in such a climate, and
essentially this one, there are positively no fit subjects for its study, nor any field
for its prosecution.13

With the advent of photography after mid-century, India as a subject for painting "lapsed into a

hobby for British ladies and a few visiting professionals."14 British artists had little interest and

British collectors little appetite for Indian subjects.

Like most of their continental colleagues British artists remained far more interested in

depicting North Africa and the Levant. The Euro-American market for scenes of Africa and the

Holy Land was booming, fueled by colonial exploits, curiosity, evangelical interests, adventure

stories, soldiers' and explorers' accounts, and impassioned political arguments that played out in

the daily press. In these years demand and canny marketing had propelled leading Orientalist

painter Jean-Leon Gérôme to the pinnacle of renown for works such as Public Prayer in the

Mosque of Amr (1871), Soloman's Wall, Jerusalem (The Wailing Wall) (1876), The Color

Grinder (1890/91), The Whirling Dervish (1889) as well as more sexually charged but factually

challenged works such as The Serpent Charmer (1880). Determined to keep pace with

12. Prinsep, 4, 350.

13. Henderson, 2.
14. Archer, India Observed, 110.

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continental rivals, British painters as diverse as David Roberts and William Wyld in the 1830s,

John Frederick Lewis in the 1840s, William Holman Hunt in the 1850s, Frederic Goodall in

1870s and 1880s, and Frank Brangwyn and John Lavery in the 1890s burnished their

professional achievements with scenes that crossed from Syria to Morocco, from Solomon's Wall

to Algiers harbor—but not India.

As British painters were busy seeking their Orients elsewhere, in the early 1880s Edwin

Lord Weeks staked his claim on their discarded artistic territory. Schooled in Paris by Bonnat,

counseled by Gérôme, intimately familiar with the architectural investigations of James

Fergusson and current with British authors on Indian culture from Sir Thomas Roe to George

Curzon, Weeks fashioned his own vision of India that drew from but was independent of British

and French traditions.

Already critically acclaimed for his paintings of North Africa, after his initial trip in 1882

the people and culture of India quickly came to dominate Weeks' oeuvre. He pivoted away from

Morocco with the first of his Indian subjects exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1884. It was a

direction that he sustained at the Salon, and in his overall production, well into the mid-1890s.

And yet, however exciting it may have been to embrace a vital, complex subject that had

lapsed in the European imagination, it was not without professional risk. Surely Weeks pondered

why India had been so neglected by his fellow European artists. Would his vision of India,

regardless of how fresh or compelling, kindle any interest? Or would it simply be overlooked or

dismissed? Even for an established artist, to test a new venture on the walls of the Paris Salon

must have been nerve-rattling.

Exhibiting at the Paris Salon was, for most artists, a professional imperative that opened

264
the doors to galleries in Europe and America. Held annually, crowds of up to ten thousand per

day streamed through the vast halls of the Palais de l'Industrie to view thousands of paintings

crammed frame to frame on the walls. Competitive admission to this "arena wherein the young

and the strong enter into fierce conflict," depended on the caprices and prejudices of the jury.15

Reputations, careers and livelihoods were at stake; such was the pressure over Salon strategies

that Cecilia Beaux wrote in exasperation of her "blues and anxieties" when preparing her

submissions.16 The risks attendant to professional missteps ranged from being accepted but

completely ignored, to being disparaged and ridiculed, to being outright rejected. With so much

riding on the submission, artists prepared for the Salon with great care and deliberation.

From 1884 to 1895 nearly every contribution by Edwin Weeks to the Paris Salon featured

an Indian subject: Un sanctuaire Hindu à Bombay and Un souvenir de Jeypore (1884); Le

dernier voyage;—souvenir du Gange (1885); Retour du cortége impérial de la grande mosque à

Delhi, sous la règne de l'Empereur Shab Jehan;—XVIIᵉ siècle (1886); Bayadéres;—Bombay,

(1887); Un rajah de Jodhpore (1888); L'heure de la prière dans la mosquée de Perle, à Agra and

Autour d'un restaurant en plein air à Lahore (1889); Le Temple d'Or d'Amritsar (1890); Les

obsèques d'un fakir à Benares (1892); Les barbiers de Saharanpore (1895). Although the first of

these Indian subjects submitted to the 1884 Salon did not generate much critical attention, the

following year's entry certainly did.17

15. "The State of Art in France," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 135, no. 822 (April 1884): 427–51,
at 430.
16. Adler, Americans in Paris, 40.
17. A number of contemporary sources report that Weeks was awarded an Honorable Mention for his

265
The Salon of 1885: Le Dernier Voyage;—souvenir du Gange (75 2/3 x 113 2/3 in.)

The Last Voyage (also called, less commonly if more appropriately, The Last Journey;

Figure 3-14), a monumental work of shimmering color, garnered Weeks an Honorable Mention

at the 1885 Paris Salon, a substantial accomplishment for an American artist. This was not only

heady recognition, but exempted Weeks from the jury selection process for the following Salon.18

At six and a half by nine plus feet, the first thing that a viewer notices about The Last Voyage, or

indeed nearly any of Weeks' Salon submissions listed above, is size. These are huge paintings.

The size alone made a new and dramatic statement about India as a subject. It is easy, for

example, to compare print or digital reproductions of The Last Voyage and other scenes of

Benares by Edwin Weeks with those of earlier British artists such as William Simpson and to

conclude that the two artists shared a common mode of communicating interest in subject matter,

lively color, animated figures, composition, and sometimes handling of light. However, the

validity of this comparison rapidly deteriorates when comparing the physical paintings.

Simpson's Varanasi (Benares), in pencil, ink and watercolor (14.2 x 20.5 inches; Figure 7-1), is

intriguing, charming, perhaps quaint. Even sitting a few inches off the floor in the less-than-

optimally-lighted vaults of the Art Gallery of Hamilton where it is now stored, The Last Voyage

1884 submission (Société des artistes français, Exposition annuelle des beaux-arts Salon de 1896 (Paris:
1896), 190; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Descriptive Catalogue of the Permanent Collections
of Works of Art on Exhibition in the Galleries (Philadelphia: 1897), 54; "Some Artists of the Day,"
Parisian 3, no. 5 (Dec. 1897): 537. However, the official Salon catalog for 1885, that listed artists who
had won awards for works submitted the previous year, made no mention of Weeks among the award
winners. Société des Artistes Français, Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture,
gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au Palais des Champs Élysées (Paris, 1885).
18. Société des Artistes Français, Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure
et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au Palais des Champs Élysées (Paris, 1886); Fink, 116, 312.

266
is striking, powerful.

Because Edwin Weeks' large canvases are on limited public display they have become

known mostly through digital media, easily accessible online. Digital imaging is the blessing

and curse of modern art historical practice. Its enabling powers are as seductive as they are

misleading. A couple of finger strokes can crop, shrink or zoom images on a computer screen or

classroom wall, and in the process create deft visual juxtapositions that often lead to compelling

comparative analyses. Stimulating as these comparisons may be, they override personal, first-

hand experience—and the artist's intentions—by manipulating the viewer's visual field and

distorting physical context. When considering the salon paintings of Edwin Weeks, it is

important to bear in mind their actual dimensions and the affect of their size and placement on

the viewer's first-hand experience.

The Last Voyage was executed on a scale not generally contemplated by British painters

of India, but commonly adopted by the French Orientalists, especially for paintings intended to

generate a commotion at the Salon. Also on display in 1885 was the Salon sensation, Jean-

Joseph Benjamin-Constant's La Justice du chérif, an overwhelming 12 by 21.75 feet. But it was

not just the painting's enormous size that caused such a stir. With an undertone of wanton

violence and misogyny that characterizes much of French Orientalist work, the painting depicts

the dark, opulent seraglio in the immediate aftermath of the slaying of five wives of the chérif.

The bodies of the women lay strewn across the floor, in various states of undress, their blood still

streaming into a courtyard fountain. A private showing of the painting in New York, limited to

male invitees, occasioned the New York Times to describe its Salon debut as "altogether

extraordinary," adding that "Scarcely anything in the exhibition attracted greater throngs or held

267
them longer."19

For sheer attention-grabbing effect, The Last Voyage was far more modest in size and

circumspect in subject than La Justice du chérif. However, it is helpful to consider how

Benjamin-Constant's work, which might well be considered the apex of a certain strain of French

Orientalism, bracketed and positioned the work of Edwin Lord Weeks in the minds of viewers

and critics. Less inclined to gratuitous scenes of mayhem and violence than the French, but

arguably more imaginative and bolder than the British, at the Salon Edwin Weeks charted his

own American brand of Orientalist painting. What was apparent to viewers was that The Last

Voyage bore little resemblance to subjects related to India as conceived by any artist of the

previous hundred years. R.A.M. Stevenson cited the painting's "riotous effect and novelty;"

Theodore Child called it "a remarkable presentation of the Oriental world with its dazzling

luminousness and brilliant color." Arts writers of the time, awash in Orientalist subjects, singled

out Edwin Weeks for his bold originality of conception and handling:

Bonnat, for example, has certainly not inspired that striking and audacious piece
of imagination and vigorous personal handling, 'Le Dernier Voyage,' of E. L.
Weeks, though he doubtless inculcated that habit of observation by masses and
that attention to delicate values which have enabled the young American to realize
his strange Oriental dream in such a bold and original manner. 20

Some of the most striking work of the year is, however, from the brush
of men not hitherto officially recognised; and conspicuous among this is
'Le Dernier Voyage' of Mr. E. L. Weeks. This is a work which would
stand out in any gallery by the forcible originality of its conception.21

19. "Constant's 'Justice du chérif," New York Times, 27 April 1886.

20. "The Salon," Saturday Review 59, no. 1,547 (20 June 1885): 824.
21. Stevenson, 516, 518.

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 These excerpts, included in a discussion of The Last Voyage in Chapter Three, bear

repeating because they demonstrate that with this painting Weeks claimed new ground. India

appeared as it never had before, in a format and a venue that commanded attention. Its people

and traditions, though curious to the Western eye, were portrayed with sympathy and interest. In

contrast to the 1885 Salon submission of Benjamin-Constant and the celebrated works of so

many other Orientalists, there was no trace of horror, salaciousness, cynicism, apprehension,

suspicion or contempt.

Weeks achieved the "bold" effects and "dazzling luminousness" of The Last Voyage

literally by the sweat of his brow, rocking unsteadily in a hot cabin on the Ganges in pursuit of

authenticity worthy of the Pre-Raphaelites. Something of Weeks' methods and his intense

dedication while working in Benares, akin to that of the early John Millais in Scotland or

William Holman Hunt in the Levant, may be gleaned from a May 1883 letter he penned to

George Corliss, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. While crossing the Red

Sea aboard the steamer Singapore, bound for Marseilles, Weeks wrote:

As all my days were occupied in painting and my evenings in developing

photos—I had but little time to write. The hot weather arrives in Benares
in March, in the shape of hot winds . . . not unhealthy but monotonous. By
placing oneself in a darkened room behind a wet kous-kous mat or "Tatty"
filling the doorway, the hot wind becomes cool and fragrant. I passed my
mornings, however, in the cabin of a boat on the Ganges and my afternoons on
the shady side of the hotel painting cooly placed in the sunshine. Where I sat
it must have been from 100º to 110 Fahr. Where my model stood it may have
been 159º according to the published weather statements in the "Allahamed

269
 Pioneer." We had the misfortune to spend a day in Allahamed on the way across
to Bombay. The hot wind and glare of light in the roadway was something to be
remembered.22

The Last Voyage became Weeks' signature work. It appeared at the 1888 International Exhibition

in Munich, the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, the 1891 Internationale Kunstausstellung of

Berlin (awarded the Grand Diploma of Honor), in New York and Philadelphia in 1891–92, the

1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 1894 Exposition in Antwerp, the 1895

Empire of India Exhibition in London (special medal), and the 1900 Exposition Internationale

des Beaux Arts in Monaco.23

After its debut at the 1885 Salon, The Last Voyage generated the most critical attention at

the Universal Exposition of 1889 in Paris, a formidable retrospective of a hundred years of

French painting along with a sweeping display of contemporary works exhibited to celebrate the

centennial of the French Revolution. After the French, American artists were foremost in

numbers with the largest showing of contemporary American art in Europe up to that time. The

exposition was a sterling opportunity to prove that America could hold its own on the

international arts scene and to reach a broader market—over 32 million people visited 61,722

exhibits in the six-month life of the extravaganza.24 After considerable wrangling over the

selection process, a tangled affair rife with slights, injustices and complexities that one artist

22. Edwin Lord Weeks to George Corliss, 10 May 1883, Steamer Singapore.
23. Blaugrund, 224; Dr. Ellen K. Morris, "Lot 91: Edwin Lord Weeks, American, 1849-1903 'The Last
Voyage—A Souvenir of the Ganges,' " La Belle Epoque Paintings and Sculpture, Sotheby's New York,
May 24, 1995, Sale #6711 (New York: Sotheby's, 1995).
24. Blaugrund, 7, 14.

270
summed up as "chaotic blundering," 336 paintings by 189 American artists were hung across

nearly 21,000 square feet of wall space. Weeks was enviably positioned as a member of the

Parisian jury tasked with selecting works by expatriate Americans for submission and securing

sufficient exhibition space.25 The Last Voyage, holding its own on the wall (Figure 7-2) against

monumental paintings by William Dannat (The Quartet, 94 3/4 by 91 3/4 inches) and Charles

Sprague Pearce (The Shepherdess), was one of five submissions by Weeks that earned him a gold

medal (first class).26

In a lengthy review of the exposition for Harper's New Monthly Magazine arts and travel

writer Theodore Child commented that Weeks was an artist "gifted with great facility," with a

remarkable "sureness of eye and hand in dealing with vast scenes:"

No one has treated with greater effect and with such unhesitating directness the
grand architectural backgrounds of India, with their pluri-color richness and
splendor of detail . . . Such is the scene depicted, with, in the background, a vision
of holy India—temples, pagodas, funeral pyres, fakirs, and men of all kinds
sheltering themselves from the blazing sun under umbrellas that look like giant
white mushrooms; and in the foreground, the broad Ganges, with its flotsam of
pious corpses escorted by carrion-crows. This picture shows Mr. Weeks's
dramatic and scenic qualities, and his careful observation of Oriental air and
color.27

25. Blaugrund, 14, 18 (citing E.W.H., "New York Notes," Boston Evening Transcript, 4 March 1889, 6
quoting James Fairman of the Tribune), 21, 25. By additional artists, the American section also included
117 drawings and grisaille paintings, 16 sculptures, 102 engravings, etchings, lithographs and an
architectural drawing.
26. Blaugrund, 54. Grand prizes were won by Gari Melchers and John Singer Sargent. The two other
Americans who were awarded gold medals were Eugene Vail and Alexander Harrison. Weeks' other
submissions included Hindoo Marriage Procession, Ahmedabad (unlocated); The Rajah of Johdpore (56
5/16 x 74 inches, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin); Sacred Lake, Study; The Mosque of Vazir
Khan, Lahore, Study.
27. Theodore Child, "American Artists at the Paris Exhibition," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 79, no.
472 (Sept. 1889): 489–521, at 514, 516. Child died in Persia in 1892 while on an extended trip with

271
The Last Voyage's "realism" was unquestionably defined by intriguing detail, an expansive sense

of space and sumptuous color. Yet it was the collusion of these components with the rendering

of strong midday light that immersed the viewer in the artist's experience, that invited the viewer

to drift on the Ganges, to skirt by the crowded stone steps of the ghats, to feel "the burning

wind" and "the full glare of the sun."28

William Gerdts has termed this preoccupation with capturing intense natural light "the

glare aesthetic," an alternative to the Impressionist's investigations of light and its optical effects.

However, the "glare aesthetic" led to an outcome on canvas somewhat opposite to

Impressionism. For the artists interested in "glare," light reinforced form rather than dissolved it.

The glare aesthetic became popular throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, in its early

manifestations related to works such as the English Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown's

Pretty Baa Lambs (1852). William Lamb Picknell (1853–97), a close contemporary of Weeks

and a fellow student in Paris, was perhaps the foremost American practitioner of this technique.

Picknell's Road to Concarneau (1880; Figure 7-3) imparts formal drama to an otherwise quiet

pastoral by dividing the lower register with an obtuse triangle of flat, near-white, even color,

sharpening the outlines of the landscape and small figures.29

The principal element of the glare aesthetic is a highly reflective, usually planar surface:

pavement, still water, walls. In The Last Voyage the shimmering Ganges, reflecting strong,

Weeks.
28. Weeks, From the Black Sea Through Persia and India, 385.
29. See generally the chapter "Glare: An Alternative Aesthetic," in William H. Gerdts, American
Impressionism (New York, London: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1984, 2001).

272
minimally-shadowed architectural forms clearly engages this concept. Weeks sustains it

throughout the painting, from the tilted umbrellas on the distant shore, to the white temple on the

far right, to the arched back of the dying man's final companion. Rather than interrupt the

illusion of solidity the artist smudged the steps leading to the water's edge with a multitude of

razor-thin horizontal shadows.

While many succumbed to the painting's "dazzling luminousness," the success of Weeks'

glare aesthetic did not persuade every reviewer. In addition to obsessing about the idea that

Weeks "a probablement usé de documents photographies," the Revue Française noted:

Quand on fait des études sur place on ne s'attarde généralement pas aux détails
d'architecture dont M. Weeks abuse: il les finit, les parachève au détriment de la
vérité de la lumière. Voyez comme les palais dominant le Gange sont gris et
sombres, en dépit de la prétention de l'artiste de nous faire assister à un effet de
soleil.30

This opinion is difficult to reconcile when confronted with the painting, now in storage in

Canada at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario. There, even in a windowless and fairly dim

room, The Last Voyage appeared nearly incandescent with the radiant color and brilliant light of

1880s Benares.31

30. P. Chassaigne de Néronde, "Les Peintres Étrangers a l'exposition universelle," Revue Française 10,
no. 77 (Sept. 1889): 258–79, at 266.
31. Fannie Weeks invited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to choose a painting from Edwin Lord Weeks'
1905 estate auction for its collections; the painting chosen was The Last Voyage. The museum
deaccessioned the painting in the 1950s.

273
The Salon of 1886: Retour du cortége impérial de la grande mosquée à Delhi,
sous la règne de l'empereur Shah Jehan;—XVIIᵉ siècle (76 x 117 in.)

At a height of six feet and a width of nearly ten feet, Return of the Imperial Court from

the Great Mosque at Delhi, in the reign of the emperor Shah Jehan;—XVIIth century (Figure 7-4)

dwarfs nearly all paintings of Indian scenes by other artists.32 The subject is a procession of the

court of the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, with the eastern or royal entrance to the Jama

Masjid in the middle background and its grand portal, towering minarets and marble-faced

domes in the distance. Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58), who oversaw the Golden Age of Mughal

architecture in India, initiated work on this enormous congregational mosque in 1650.

Completed six years later, it stands atop a high plinth on a natural rise in Old Delhi. Called at the

time of its construction the Masjid-i Jahanuma, or "the mosque commanding a view of the

world," when built it was the largest mosque in South Asia.

The eastern, or royal, gate depicted is of red sandstone. Over eighty feet across, flanked

by an arched arcade atop a high wall, it is the most prominent of the three entrance gates to the

mosque's central courtyard. The immense ogee arch iwan, which Weeks placed in the center of

the canvas, leads to the gateway's domed interior and thence into the courtyard designed to

accommodate thousands of worshippers. Originally this entrance was restricted to the imperial

court but during the British occupation was used by the Governor-General.

32. In 2002 this painting was in the collection of David H. Koch. Hiesinger, 83 plate 26. Three paintings
of India notably larger than those of Weeks' are Valentine Prinsep's royal commission (roughly 10 x 27
feet), Imperial Assemblage held at Delhi, 1 January 1877 (1877–80), Vasili Vereshchagin's Pearl Mosque
at Delhi (about 13 x 16.5 feet) and The State Entry of the Prince of Wales in Jaipur in 1876 (about 16.3 x
22.8 feet).

274
 At about the same time Return of the Imperial Court was painted Weeks executed a

smaller (33 5/8 x 54 1/4 inches) but similarly themed work, The Great Mogul and His Court

Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India (Figure 3-23), now in the collection of the

Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Although this smaller canvas was discussed at some length in

Chapter Three, it is appropriate also to consider it in the context of Weeks' larger 1886 Salon

painting. The style, palette and content of both paintings is essentially the same, though the

royal entourage in The Great Mogul proceeds parallel to the less prominent southern gate of

Delhi's Jama Masjid.

There are a number of possible textual and visual sources for these two works of color-

saturated historical genre that added a new element to nineteenth-century European

visualizations of India. Edwin Weeks was certainly familiar with the journals of Thomas Roe,

English ambassador to the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, father of Shah Jahan. He also

mentioned and occasionally quoted from the detailed, first-hand accounts of other early

European visitors to India, such as those of Edward Terry (A Voyage to East-India, 1655), Dr.

John Fryer (A New Account of East-India and Persia, in Eight Letters. Being Nine Years Travels,

Begun 1672. And Finished 1681) and French physician François Bernier (1625–88), who arrived

in 1658 and provided medical services to the Mughal court.33

Bernier's Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656–1668 describes the emperor's Friday

ritual procession to the great mosque of Delhi. Departing from the nearby Delhi fortress along a

33. Edwin Lord Weeks, "Hindoo and Moslem," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 91, no. 545 (Oct.
1895): 651–69, at 561; Weeks, "Notes on Indian Art," 568.

275
line of "musketeers" that formed an avenue leading away from its gate, the kingly retinue was

preceded by a cadre of retainers who watered the streets to temper the dust and alleviate the heat.

With these preliminaries accomplished,

. . . his Majesty leaves the fortress, sometimes on an elephant, decorated with rich
trappings, and a canopy supported by painted and gilt pillars; and sometimes in a
throne gleaming with azure and gold, placed on a litter covered with scarlet or
brocade which eight chosen men, in handsome attire, carry on their shoulders. A
body of Omrahs follow the King, some on horseback, and other in Palekys; and
among the Omrahs are seen a great number of Mansebdars, and the bearers of
silver maces . . . I cannot say that this train resembles the pompous processions . .
. or the martial retinues of European Monarchs: its magnificence is of a different
character; but it is not therefore the less royal.34

Undoubtedly Weeks also drew inspiration from Louis Rousselet's description in India and

Its Native Princes of "the sacred Jummah Musjid, one of the monuments which the Mussulmans

of Central Asia and of India most venerate and admire." Rousselet agreed with James Fergusson

that "the great mosque of Delhi is the masterpiece of Indo-Mussulman religious architecture."

Describing the grand courtyard entrance to the mosque, Rousselet wrote:

but what no description can do justice to—and even engraving itself is powerless
to assist it—is the incomparable effect produced by the vivid though severe
colours which clothe every part of the building, when they are illuminated by the
glorious sun of India. The dark red of the galleries, the black and white marbles
of the facade, the whiteness of the domes crowned by glittering golden pinnacles,
and the rose-coloured stripings of the minarets, stand out against the blue
background of the sky without any crudeness, but rather with a severe harmony,
proving the care with which the architect had combined and matched the varied
shades, and skilfully calculated their effects, according to the different parts of the
edifice they were connected with.35

34. François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656–1668, trans. Irving Brock, rev. Archibald
Constable (London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1891), 280.
35. Rousselet, 480–81.

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With these words Rousselet issued what Weeks must have taken as an artistic challenge, not only

as a student and interpreter of Indian architecture but also as an artist keenly focused on color

and sunlight.

Rousselet and Fergusson are among the likely French and British visual sources that

argue for a conceptual and stylistic merger of these two traditions in Edwin Weeks' new

visualization of the Jama Masjid. Illustrating his description, in India and Its Native Princes

Louis Rousselet included two etchings of the "Jummah Musjid" showing the walled compound

as well as the courtyard entrance (Figures 7-5, 7-6). James Fergusson provided an almost

identical directional view from an aerial perspective in his 1876 History of Indian and Eastern

Architecture (Figure 7-7). It is also likely that Weeks relied on his own photographs and possibly

those of other photographers as compositional and drafting aids. The extraordinarily close

perspectival correspondences between the entrance gate as depicted in Return of the Imperial

Court and that in General view of the Jumma Musjid, Delhi (Figure 7-8) strongly suggest that

Weeks may have utilized albumen prints from photographs taken of the Jama Masjid by Captain

Eugene Clutterbuck Impey.36

36. Impey published a very limited number of albums of his photographs of India, entitled Delhi, Agra,
and Rajpootana, illustrated by eighty photographs (London: Cundall, Downes and Company, 1865). The
publisher's advertising flyer noted: "The views of which this work consists have been carefully selected
by the celebrated architect and art connoisseur, Mr. James Fergusson, out of an extensive collection of
negatives taken by Capt. Impey, and are pronounced by him to be the most interesting series, both from
an architectural and a general point of view, which has ever been brought to England . . . People interested
in Indian architecture will find in this work the means of a complete course of study . . . To each
photograph are affixed a few words of description, prepared under the supervision of Mr. Fergusson . . . "
General View of the Jumma Musjid, Delhi, photographic print from Captain E[ugene] C[lutterbuck]
Impey, Delhi, Agra, and Rajpootana, illustrated by eighty photographs (London: Cundall, Downes and
Co., 1865), India Office Select Materials, British Library online collections, http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/
indiaofficeselect/PhotoShowDescs.asp?CollID=1757, accessed 27 June 2013.

277
 However novel or exact, architectural rendering alone was not likely to excite interest at

the Salon. By setting the figures outside of the walls Weeks was able to energize his composition

with the pageantry and drama of a royal procession while keeping the grandeur of the Jama

Masjid a central subject of the painting. Again, British and French precedents may have inspired

this compositional strategy. The most obvious is the Picturesque version of the same subject,

Thomas Daniell's aquatint Eastern Gate of the Jummah Musjid at Delhi included as plate 1 in

Oriental Scenery: Twenty Four Views in Hindoostan (1795; Figure 7-9). Weeks may have also

looked to illustrations from Alexis Soltykoff's 1848 Voyages dans l'Inde, some of which featured

processions with a multitude of animated figures bearing umbrellas and fluttering standards,

cavaliers with lances and lumbering elephants against a skyline of distant domes and minarets

(Principale rue de Lucknow. Capitale du Royaume d'Aoude; Figure 7-10). Weeks' The Great

Mogul and his Court, with its figures proceeding generally from left to right within a strong

architectural setting, positioned below an elevated arcade, is particularly resonant with

Soltykoff's Cortêge du grand mogol a Dehli [sic] (Figure 7-11).

Though it is fair to speculate that Weeks' primary goal, particularly with Return of the

Imperial Court, was to produce surpassing work that was at once visually arresting, technically

challenging and sufficiently novel to attract the attention of the the Paris Salon jury, the subject

and its presentation intimate other purposes. Again turning to James Fergusson, his impassioned

writings on the preservation of Indian architecture suggest that Weeks had a motive more

compelling than the desire to lend the visual presentation of this Mughal monument and royal

procession a lively update.

278
 Fergusson was appalled by the wholesale destruction of the monuments of Delhi that

followed the suppression of the rebellion of 1857. It was not enough that during the siege much

of Delhi was irreparably damaged from mortar attacks. The British retaliatory plan, supported

by high ranking officials in London and India, essentially was to wipe Delhi off of the map; Lord

Palmerston stated that "every civil building connected with the Mohammedan tradition should be

levelled to the ground without regard to antiquarian veneration or artistic predilections."

Fortunately, the regional administrator and later Viceroy John Lawrence successfully argued to

curtail most of the planned demolitions. Nonetheless, in subsequent years a number of the city's

finest mosques and great Sufi shrines were destroyed; four of Delhi's most magnificent palaces

were obliterated along with the homes of Indian nobles and important civic buildings. Although

Lawrence was able to save the Jama Masjid, eighty percent of the nearby imperial fortress, the

Red Fort, was destroyed, much of it to make way for a nondescript British barracks. The vast

cleared space around the Jama Masjid, visible in Figure 7-8, was the result of further British

demolitions. In a series of letters the Mughal poet Ghalib lamented that the everything from the

banks of the Jumna river to the Jama Masjid, a distance of about a mile, "is without exaggeration

a great mound of bricks."37

Edwin Weeks could not have failed to consider James Fergusson's opinion on the matter,

forcefully expressed some twenty years later, in his 1876 History of Indian and Eastern

37. William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (New York: Vintage
Books, 2006), 419–24; on Palmerston, 419–20, 499 note 20 as cited by Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed:
The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 92, note 42; quoting Ghalib,
422, 501 note 28 citing "The Sack of Delhi as Witnessed by Ghalib," Bengal Past & Present 12 (Jan.–
Dec. 1955): 110.

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Architecture:

The whole of the hareem courts of the palace were swept off the face of the earth
to make way for a hideous British barrack, without those who carried out this
fearful piece of Vandalism thinking it even worth while to make a plan of what
they were destroying, or preserving any record of the most splendid palace in the
world.

The truth of the matter appears to be this: the engineers perceived that by gutting
the palace they could provide at no trouble or expense a wall round their barrack-
yard, and one that no drunken soldier could scale without detection, and for this or
some such wretched motive of economy the palace was sacrificed!38

In England, preservation of Indian architecture became increasingly topical as the emotions

roiled by war became more distant. An 1883 article on the recently issued first Report of the

Curator of Ancient Monuments in India noted that "without the valuable work of men like James

Fergusson "it is within the bounds of probability that the magnificent remains of topes, citadels,

palaces, baths, tombs, and mosques would have been left to take care of themselves, to be

disintegrated, maltreated, or razed to the ground as modern requirements might dictate." The

report cited numerous examples of neglect, indifference and purposeful desecration:

The great pillared Diwan-i-am at Delhi with its fine marble mosaic canopy and
throne is used as a canteen; and the right of the throne is a bar for serving out
liquor! To the left of the throne is an enclosure of bamboo screen-work, in which
Nubbi Bux keeps a soldiers' coffee shop. Above and at the back of the throne is a
small open apartment, the walls of which are faced with the celebrated black
marble mosaic work; but this, as well as the inlaid patterns on the throne, has been
villainously repaired in coloured plaster.39

The Times reiterated the report's cautions in the summer of 1886, while Weeks' Return of the

38. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (1876), 595: 594–95.
39. "Conservation of Indian Architecture," Times (London), 13 August 1883, no. 30897, 3 E.

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Imperial Court from the Great Mosque at Delhi was hanging at the Paris Salon, in a review of

Sir Lepel Griffin's newly published Famous Monuments of Central India. Quoting the author,

the article read:

The English in India are often reproached with vandalism, and with some justice,
as the neglected state of the Delhi fortress and palace proves. In the whole world,
if Rome and Athens be excepted, there is no place more impressive than the Delhi
palace, where for thousands of years successive branches of the various Aryan
races have fixed their throne. Yet there the marble hall of public audience
beautiful in its grave simplicity has been turned into a canteen, where under a
slovenly punkah British soldiers drink and quarrel, while tawdry prints of favored
beauties are stuck against the throne from which the Emperor Akbar promulgated
his decrees. No visitor of taste or sensibility can view this desecration without
feelings of shame and disgust.40

Edwin Weeks was not only aware of these issues, he wrote informatively about "the

havoc wrought by the rude conquerors who came in the service of 'John Company.' " In "Notes

on Indian Art," a survey of the principal monuments and traditional crafts of (mostly northern)

India for Harper's September 1895 number, Weeks recognized the futility of dwelling on the

wanton destruction of previous years, whether its rationale was expediency or retribution.

Instead, his discussion emphasized the positive: the glories of Indian architecture, the British

government's recent restoration and preservation efforts, the institution of government schools

for the decorative arts and the promotion of indigenous design.

While Weeks expressed hope that, with governmental and commercial encouragement,

Indian artisans might continue to produce splendid examples of traditional crafts for a couple of

more decades, he despaired of any sustained success. Palaces and public buildings, "the fantastic

40. "Famous Monuments of Central India," Times (London), 22 July 1886, no. 31818, 13 A.

281
and graceful architecture which admits of such varied combinations," were destined to fall victim

to the "utilitarian spirit" that demanded new roads, new buildings, new infrastructure, new city

plans. The article's concluding sentence is notably discouraging: "Nothing can check the steady

growth of these improvements; and their triumphant excuse for being ugly is that they are

cheap."41

Weeks' opinions on Indian architectural preservation reached specialists as well as

general readers. Despite Weeks' evenhanded assessment, the Society for the Encouragement and

Preservation of Indian Art (S.E.P.I.A.), closely associated with the undeniably imperialistic

emphasis of the South Kensington Museum, took exception to his pessimistic views of the

British government's attitudes towards Indian monuments. In a five-page review of "Notes on

Indian Art" published in The Indian Magazine and Review, the Society praised Weeks' "splendid

illustrations" and "attempt to create interest" in the subject of preservation of Indian architecture,

but slammed his reliance on Fergusson, his occasional misspellings, his "confused history," and

"carelessness and lack of information." In the next issue Weeks fired back. He supported his

remarks with reference to the Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India, decried his critic's

failure to acknowledge the many instances of architectural destruction and neglect, and chided

him for focusing on minutiae at the expense of the broader issue.42 Suggesting that the excesses

of the British government and military in India were "a somewhat tender subject with the author

41. Weeks, "Notes on Indian Art," 585.

42. K-W., "Society for the Encouragement and Preservation of Indian Art," Indian Magazine and Review
26, no. 298 (Oct. 1895): 529–33 and E.L.W., "Society for the Encouragement and Preservation of Indian
Art," Indian Magazine and Review 26, no. 299 (Nov. 1895): 551–57.

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of the pamphlet," Weeks repeated his desire to focus on the government's "laudable efforts to

make amends for them." However, he did not back away from his critique or the independent

point of view he expressed in the pages of the popular Harper's Magazine.

Although this public volleying on Indian architectural preservation took place some years

after Edwin Weeks submitted Return of the Imperial Court from the Great Mosque at Delhi to

the Paris Salon of 1886, it speaks to the strong convictions that Weeks had regarding the

magnificent achievements of the Mughal period. Moreover, it reveals the personal sentiments

that underlay his conception of the painting, shaped by the artist's sojourns in India as well as his

close readings of the seventeenth-century accounts of European travelers to the Mughal court

and the opinions of James Fergusson. Exhibiting a huge painting of the Jama Masjid at Delhi, in

the very public space of the Paris Salon, was a way to commemorate and help preserve it.

This is not to claim that Edwin Lord Weeks' intentions were in any sense altruistic or

aimed at questioning the legitimacy of British rule in India. It is however, to claim that Return of

the Imperial Court from the Great Mosque at Delhi asserted the vitality of the Indian people and

the worthiness of Indian culture, and gave European audiences a new, bolder vision of India only

a few months after the fledgling Indian National Congress was founded in December of 1885.

Return of the Imperial Court was moreover a direct counter to the violent and sexualized

interpretations of the Orient favored by leading French artists Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-

Joseph Benjamin-Constant. In addition, as it hung on the walls of the Paris Salon in the summer

of 1886, it challenged the conventional British paintings of India then on exhibit at London's

Colonial and Indian Exhibition, a self-congratulatory imperial extravaganza that had opened in

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May.43

Return of the Imperial Court was favored in The Magazine of Art (London) with a full-

page reproduction in its January 1886 issue.44 The Art Amateur ran a large detail of the central

group of figures, entitled The Mogul Emperor Returning from Prayer, to accompany Theodore

Child's review of the American contributions to the Salon. Child found the composition

"complicated and brilliant":

. . . with the vast wall and domes of the mosque in the background, and the
gorgeous procession winding down the steps and joined by horsemen and soldiers
of the guard, it is a work of very great ability, full of high qualities of observation
and technical skill. Those whose tastes incline them to admire simple landscapes
and anecdotic interiors little think what varied knowledge and what strong
intelligence it requires to compose, hold together, and paint adequately and truly a
scene of the extent and animation of this Oriental procession.45

Regardless of the keen powers of observation, command of color harmonies and

technical skills they may display, today it is easy, even expected, to classify Return of the

Imperial Court from the Great Mosque at Delhi, in the reign of the emperor Shah Jehan;—

XVIIth century (Figure 7-4), submitted to the Paris Salon of 1886, or the smaller The Great

Mogul and His Court Returning from the Great Mosque at Delhi, India (Figure 3-23) as little

43. As listed in Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886. Official Catalogue, 2nd ed. (London: William
Clowes and Sons, 1886), xci–xciii. Weeks attended the exhibition, where he took particular notice of "a
collection of large photographs which looked as if they might have been taken in the days of Saladin;"
they were taken at Bikanir. Weeks, "A Painter's Impressions of Rajpootana," Harper's New Monthly
Magazine 89, no. 534 (Nov. 1894): 835–57, at 842.
44. Confusingly entitled Shah Jehan Leaving the Great Mosque at Delhi, the image appeared in Paul
Leroi, "The American Salon," Magazine of Art (London) 9 (Jan. 1886): 485–90 at 489.
45. Theodore Child, "Gallery and Studio. American Pictures at the Salon," Art Amateur (May 1886):
123–25.

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more than works of historical genre. They might charitably be considered charming indulgences

of an artist's fantasies of the past, or more in keeping with Saidian criticism, as discredited

commentaries on the triumphs of imperialism and the backwardness of a colonial population. To

this range of interpretations must be added another: that Edwin Lord Weeks selected the subject

of these paintings, the Jama Masjid and the Indian imperial past, to reinvigorate the symbolism

of Mughal architecture as well as to reposition it within the debates and events of his own time.

A few months after the close of the Salon, in the fall of 1886 Weeks and his wife

embarked on their second trip to India. After a stay of five months the artist's return in mid-

March left him a very compressed pre-Salon schedule. To the 1887 exhibition Weeks

contributed Bayadères of Bombay. The usual Salon fare resonated in a lower key that year; "The

work of the French artists, is freer from horrors, of the 'blood and thunder' kind than usual."

Weeks' reviews were likewise subdued, although the Independent noted that "Mr. Weeks's

'Bayadères of Bombay' is a solidly painted, brilliant little work, which we understand is already

sold to an American amateur." 46 Weeks' submission for the following year demonstrated that he

had more time to prepare.

The Salon of 1888: Un rajah de Jodhpore (56.3 x 74 in.)

April thirtieth, the opening of the 1888 Paris Salon, was wet, "hopelessly, drenchingly

wet; the chestnut trees, which have just begun to unfold their soft, green, fan-like leaves, dropped

moisture from every twig; the restaurants in the Champs Elysées, usually so crowded, were

46. "Fine Arts. The Paris Salon," Independent 39, no. 2008 (1887): 6.

285
deserted; and in the long lines of carriages and cabs not an open one was to be seen."

Undeterred, the acknowledged belle in attendance was the celebrated beauty from New Orleans,

the exquisite Madame Gautreau, who apparently had recovered from her humiliations during the

Salon of 1884. Perhaps it was the recollection of that scandal, the Sargent portrait of the aloof

parisienne in fallen-strap gown, the hint of an imminent further "wardrobe malfunction," that

prompted a reviewer of Edwin Lord Weeks' A Rajah of Jodhpore (Figure 7-12) to remark that it

was "a little bit of the extreme East in which the figures do not appear to have dressed

themselves for the occasion in all the clothes they possess."47 Once past her initial concerns for

the figures' modesty, the reviewer added: "The picture impresses with a sense of evident reality,

and is brilliant with sun and atmosphere."48

No one else seemed to be concerned by the figures' attire. The overwhelming impression

of A Rajah of Jodhpore, in pronounced contrast to the grey Paris skies and sheets of rain, was

that of intense sunlight:

Mr. Weeks's Rajah de Jodhpore (2524) possesses much brilliancy and many
splendid costumes. The picture glitters all over; its glow and the tact of the artist's
swift touch charm painters who do not care about the subject.49

Brilliancy and glitter is precisely what Weeks was after. While the painting was still a work in

47. Agnes Farley Millar, "Fine Arts. The Paris Salon. I." Independent 40, no. 2061 (1888): 7; Agnes
Farley Millar, "Fine Arts.: The Paris Salon. II.," Independent 40, no. 2062 (1888): 7.
48. Agnes Farley Millar, "Fine Arts.: The Paris Salon. II.," 7.
49. The writer added, "Mr. Weeks came from Boston, U.S., and is a pupil of M. Bonnat, but he paints as a
pupil of M. Benjamin-Constant might be expected to paint by those who do not know how seldom the
pupils of Parisian ateliers follow their masters." "The Salon, Paris," Athenaeum 3164 (16 June 1888):
767-69, at 767.

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progress Weeks commented to Robert Sherard, who was visiting the artist's Paris studio on a

similarly leaden, monochromatic February afternoon:

This is what I intend to send to the Salon, but if I am not satisfied with it when it
is finished it won't go and I shall send nothing. I mean if it looks fresh and bright
and clear it goes; if it looks dried up it stays. It is bright, clear sunlight I want to
depict in this picture.50

The artist's "wonderful handling of light" is what Robert Sherard recalled most about the painting

some years later:

The same may be said of Edwin Lord Weeks, who, in the grey of a Parisian
studio, floods his charming canvases with that bright sunlight of British India
which, for the purposes of his art, he explored in every direction. His 'Fin d'une
Promenade,' a Jodpure scene, will be remembered by those who were fortunate
enough to see it in the Paris Salon of 1888. The warmest note of colour in this
picture is the warm blue of the Indian sky, seen athwart the glittering minarets;
but there is art in this use of subdued colours as displayed in the general effect of
brilliant sunlight. 51

As Weeks stated and as Sherard well remembered, the primary subject of A Rajah of

Jodhpore is the effects of bright sunlight. The painting is essentially a complicated study of the

"glare effect," a challenge made more severe by the scene's varying architectural planes and

angles, the sharply delineated shadows, the numerous figures, and the monochromatic treatment

of building and foreground. It was a challenge confronted by Mariano Fortuny in the early

1870s; it is likely Fortuny's example that Weeks had in mind when he attempted to confront and

50. A. [Robert?] H. Sherard, "Mr. E. L. Weeks's studio in the Avenue de Wagram . . .," copy of an
untitled, undated clipping, probably from the Weeks Family Scrapbook, The Art of Edwin Lord Weeks,
File 1, Box 7, Art Gallery Exhibition Files, 1941-2004, UA 9/3/1, Milne Special Collections and
Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH.
51. Sherard, "American Artists in Paris," 228–29.

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resolve this problem on canvas for the Paris Salon of 1888.

Weeks encountered the red "fortresslike" home on a ramble through the dusty streets of

Jodhpur in December of 1882, which he wrote about for Harper's Magazine. A sketch related to

the painting illustrates "A Painter's Impressions of Rajpootana" (November 1894), which

describes the artist's travels through Rajasthan in northwestern India, whose principalities were

among "all that is left of the 'India of the Rajahs."52 Of the rajahs in general Weeks wrote at

length, discussing their enviable position in remote states where "the ancient prestige of kingship

has most completely escaped the levelling tendencies of the age," their oversight by British

Resident Agents, their education in England's universities, and their social prominence in Paris.

He lauded their charity and intellectual achievements; he poked fun at their usual preference for

"shoes with side elastics, which mar the effect of his otherwise correct attire;" he acknowledged

their studied nonchalance on the steps of the Grand Hotel and their command of lively dinners in

the open-air restaurants of the Champs Élysées. Through these passages the reader senses that

the rajah, placed at the exact center of Weeks' Salon painting, is both privileged and trapped, the

pivot point of change in Indian society, caught between two vastly different and competing

worlds.

Jodhpur was not a tourist destination in the early 1880s. A perplexed Weeks was not even

sure how to get there: ". . . and in the event of our getting there should we find any shelter more

hospitable than the cold ground, were questions which we tried in vain to solve, until we chanced

upon a copy of the Rajpootana-Malwa Railway Guide, in the book-stall at the Ahmedabad

52. Weeks, "A Painter's Impressions of Rajpootana," 836.

288
station." Relying on "that largely circulated but not always reliable authority" the artist and his

wife boarded a train traveling northbound overnight. In the "dry chill of a December morning"

the couple arrived at the Marwar Junction. From there they caught another train, bound farther

north through the gravelly, treeless desert to Jodhpur.53

Once situated in the only accommodation in Jodhpur available to travelers, a nearby

spartan "bungalow"—boasting a square table, a couple of chairs and two bed frames "guiltless of

any covering" save a stout tape on which to lay—Weeks set off in search of the Resident Agent.

Walking the narrow streets, craning to see the balconied windows, peeking into shadowed

courtyards, Weeks came across the building he memorialized in the painting:

In one quarter a few groups of palaces surrounded a large tank. One of them,
built of red sandstone of exactly the same color and value as the sand in front,
seemed to me then—and will always seem, for I have kept a study of it—a
marvellous [sic] combination of massive simplicity and graceful but not excessive
decoration. The walls, which rose directly from the sand of the road, save for a
species of ramp in front, leading up to the high Persian arch of the entrance, were
unrelieved below by a single ornamental detail, while all the decoration was
lavished on the projecting windows above. The great central window over the
gate had the curved cornice or window-cap characteristic of the later Mogul style,
the panels were filled in with beautiful stone lace-work, while on either side were
slender bay-windows of varied forms. Through the open gate below, the green
foliage of the garden made a pleasing note in the expanse of red. The beauty of
this façade was greatly enhanced by the fantastic shadows thrown on the flat walls
by these various projections.54

This is precisely what strikes the viewer. The dusty red forecourt and masonry walls dictate the

predominant hue of seven-eighths of the canvas. This massive solidity is broken up by crisply

53. Weeks, "A Painter's Impressions of Rajpootana," 836.

54. Weeks, "A Painter's Impressions of Rajpootana," 838.

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detailed fenestration, sharp shadows thrown at acute angles and through the entryway a glimpse

of the greenery beyond.

In its overall sense of color and architectural presentation, especially the left half, A

Rajah of Jodhpore is very reminiscent of Mariano Fortuny's Court of Justice, Alhambra (1871;

Figure 7-13). Photographs reveal that Fortuny's work was executed with great fidelity, including

the hanging lamps which are believed to correspond to the originals. Thematically, the painting

expresses Fortuny's concern with depicting the effects of light on a sheer architectural plane, a

chief preoccupation of the artist while in Granada. The work was purchased in 1872 by the

American William H. Stewart, a great patron of Fortuny, who for many years maintained an art-

filled residence in Paris well known to European artists and collectors.55 It is quite possible that

Weeks studied this painting in Stewart's home, given that Weeks was an admirer of Fortuny and

even spent significant time in Fortuny's Granada studio (noted in Chapter Four).

Obviously Weeks' and Fortuny's paintings differ in content and setting, but their

presentations and technical resolutions are similar. Court of Justice, Alhambra (Tribunal de la

Alhambra) is remarkable for the complexity of its intersecting lines and planes, with a strong

diagonal swath of pale color emphasizing height and, paradoxically, both stillness and

movement. Weeks employed a similar diagonal, also angled at about twenty degrees, that

reaches from the right segment of the arch over the principal windows, to the top of the rajah's

55. Mercè Doñate, Cristina Mendoza and Francesc M. Quílez i Corella, Fortuny (1838–1874) (Barcelona:
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, 2004), 254–58, 526. See also Charles De Kay, "The Stewart
Collection," New York Times, 2 January 1898, Illustrated Weekly Magazine 10.

290
head, to the toes of the kneeling elephant. Both entryways, and their darkened interiors, are

viewed from the same perspectival point. Like Weeks' A Rajah of Jodhpore, Fortuny's green

garden is just visible through the deep passage, offering a welcome change of color from the

uniformity of the walls and foreground. The uniformity itself was a central challenge of both

paintings. Both artists had to confront the same formidable technical problem of how to

differentiate the ground plane from the walls while holding color and value constant.

To this end Fortuny placed two figures, laying flat on their backs perpendicular to the

wall, to help define the ground plane. Despite their plight as shackled prisoners they do not

command nearly the interest (bearing in mind the Salon audience) of Weeks' gorgeously

caparisoned elephants, one standing calmly awaiting his master's instructions and one kneeling

low as if he were a well-trained little dog. Improbably, the great creatures lend a grandeur and

dignity to what amounted to a commonplace, unexciting scene of the rajah dismounting from a

somewhat awkward height.

Although Weeks frequently described witnessing similar activities, it is likely that this

particular scene was invented for purposes of composition and popular interest. However, Weeks

wrote about touring the cliff top palace fortress, the Mehrangarh Fort, which overlooks Jodhpur.

There he encountered "dashing cavaliers, arrayed in brocade or fine muslin, each with his little

turban so placed as not to hide the handiwork of the Rajpoot barber." Within the palace's

"wilderness of courts and cloisters, of narrow corridors and pilloried halls" he observed a

startling array of furnishings, including "old palaquins and dilapidated elephant-howdahs," "a

museum of antiquated firearms," "richly furnished beds," and "old portraits of the emperors and

kings of Delhi, by native artists." In the museums of the fort today there are elephant howdahs

291
sided with lion motifs, symbolic of royalty, similar to that prominently shown in Weeks' A Rajah

of Jodhpore. Though the individual figures and the assemblage may be imaginary, in all

likelihood the royal dress, the sumptuous trappings of the elephants, and the attendants'

implements are based on the artist's careful observation of originals then in use.

Weeks' ability to summon from authentic components a scene that was plausible, rich

with color, vibrant with heat and brilliant light, and brimming with the life of India stands in

marked contrast to the efforts of his English and French counterparts. It was a talent for

organizing the imagination, within the parameters of everyday reality and common perception, in

a way that was open, engaging, foreign but not intimidating. As Theodore Child recognized, it

was a talent increasingly rare among painters of the late nineteenth century:

In the 'Hindoo Marriage' and the 'Rajah of Jodhpore' we admire Mr. Weeks's
faculty of composing and setting on foot a great scene comprising landscape,
architecture, animals, and countless figures, with all their diverse costumes,
attitudes, and multifarious accessories. And this faculty, it may be added, is not
common in these days of a 'realism' which is too often content to limit its efforts
to painting 'studies.' 56

The Salon of 1889: L'heure de la prière dans la mosquée de perle, à Agra (79 x 116 in.);
Autour d'un restaurant en plein air à Lahore (62 x 96.7 in.)

Due to preparations for the forthcoming blockbuster event of 1889, the Universal

Exhibition in Paris, leading American artists were understandably distracted from the usual

hubbub surrounding the opening of that year's annual Salon. No doubt bearing in mind tactical

concerns about impact, placement and overexposure, William Dannat skipped the Salon entirely

56. Theodore Child, "American Artists at the Paris Exhibition," 516.

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and kept all three of his latest paintings for the Universal Exhibition, as did John Singer Sargent

and J. Gari Melchers. Still, that left about a hundred and fifty American artists to show at the

1889 Salon, among them Edwin Weeks, Cecilia Beaux, Childe Hassam, Walter Gay, J. Carroll

Beckwith and others. Making the pre-Salon studio rounds critic Theodore Child enthusiastically

described the two works that Weeks was shortly to submit:

Edwin Lord Weeks sends "The White Mosque" and "Open Air Restaurant at
Lahore." These two pictures are excellent; the 'Open Air Restaurant' is a very
remarkable piece of work from the point of view of technique and composition,
while the "White Mosque" is simply a tour de force; Mr. Weeks may justly hope
for a medal on the strength of these two efforts.57

Child predicted accurately; Weeks was awarded a third-class medal, an unusual distinction for an

American artist (Figure 1-23, Weeks with The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque on his easel).

The subjects of both of the paintings that Weeks submitted cater to the interest in

carefully detailed images of street life still popular in late-nineteenth century Europe as well as to

common curiosity about exotic locales and unfamiliar religious practice. They balance bright,

invitingly warm palettes and carefully modulated color with strong linear compositions. The key

figures are not "types;" rather their expressions and postures reveal individual personalities. The

cropped edges of both paintings suggest the influence of photography as they hint at the more

expansive scene left to the viewer's imagination. This tension between an expanded visual field

and a more controlled focus, as if through a lens, was readily apparent to Theodore Child, who

wrote of Weeks' "remarkable talent for disposing on canvases of reasonable dimensions scenes

57. Theodore Child, "The Paris Salon of 1889: What the American Colony are Sending," Art Amateur
20, no. 6 (May 1889): 126.

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that have the immensity and manifold interest of a panorama."58

However, these placid views belie the military and political context that the 1889 Salon

audience would have associated with the respective locales of The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl

Mosque, Agra and An Open-Air Restaurant in Lahore (Figures 7-14, 7-15). The languid scene

in the courtyard of the Pearl Mosque (Moti Mashid), within the Mughal Red Fort, celebrates its

iridescent beauty but betrays nothing of its military entanglements. The British had controlled

the fort since Agra was annexed in 1803. In 1857 it was the site of a fierce battle, at which time

the Pearl Mosque was commandeered for use as a military hospital. Subsequently the British

razed most of the Mughal architecture within the fort compound to expedite construction of an

army barracks, still garrisoned there when Weeks made his preparatory sketches for the painting.

Lahore is the capital of the northern province of the Punjab in present day Pakistan. It

was a critical British outpost during the "Great Game," the extended political conflict between

Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia (and access to India), at its height in 1889.59 When

An Open-Air Restaurant in Lahore hung on the walls of the Paris Salon, some ten to twelve

thousand troops under British command were stationed in Lahore and the Punjab, supported by a

recent flurry of railway construction that could rush additional troops to the Northwest Frontier.60

This implicit subtext would not have escaped readers of the Illustrated London News, which

58. Theodore Child, "American Artists at the Paris Salon," Harper's Weekly 33 (20 April 1889): 321–23
at 321.
59. Weeks refers to the popular opera Le roi de Lahore by Jules Massenet, first performed in Paris in
April 1877.
60. Weeks described the "great fortresslike station of Lahore, built with an eye to possible military
necessities" in "Lahore and the Punjaub," 660.

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allotted a double-page spread to a reproduction of An Open-Air Restaurant at Lahore in its

December 11, 1889 issue. The machinations of the Great Game, the relative strengths of Britain

and Russia, the implications for France, Germany and world trade, were frequent topics of

speculation and analysis in newspapers, magazines and specialist publications throughout

Europe.

The geopolitics of Central Asia was a concern of Americans, as well. Describing his first

tour of Lahore—about the same time Weeks was there—American bishop and prolific writer

John F. Hurst wrote:

When one reaches Lahore, and climbs to the top of the lofty minaret near the
ancient Mogul palace, his first thought is to cast his eye to the far northwest,
where Afghanistan lies, and where Russian and Saxon are sure, sooner or later, to
battle for the India at your feet.61

In a similar vein Edwin Lord Weeks began his October 1894 article for Harper's Magazine,

"Lahore and the Punjaub." He devoted the first section of this otherwise chatty travelogue to a

discussion of the British annexation of the Punjab, "the long-looked-for invasion from the north,"

"the recent negotiations at Cabool," the martial character of the "Afghans, Pathans, and

Beloochees," Afghanistan as "a power to be reckoned with" and the stability of relations with its

"Ameer as an ally." One of the article's illustrations, Punjaubi Infantry, a half-page sketch of a

smartly-dressed rifle platoon marching shoulder-to-shoulder, testifies to Weeks' impressions of

the inhabitants' superior soldierly capabilities that he believed were inherent in the native

61. John F. Hurst, "The Fort and Palaces of Lahore," Independent 38, no. 1964 (22 July 1886): 1. Weeks
was headed by train to Lahore in late December 1886, Weeks to Twombly, 18 December 1886. In 1893
he spent several weeks in Lahore; "Current Events, Indian," Times of India, 5 May 1894, 3.

295
population. The text is more explicit: The "tall, sinewy, and athletic" infantrymen appeared

"endowed with a peculiar fitness for their vocation," so different from haphazard European

recruits that they appeared "not only of a different race, but a different species of the human

animal."62 This is the language of ethnic stereotyping, but it is also the recognition of Indian

cultural strength and British vulnerability.

In Weeks' assessment, though "sunburnt or tanned, and begrimed with dust," the fruit

sellers, "peaceable peddlers of 'notions,' " camel drivers and horse dealers of Lahore were

"excellent fighting material."63 Going about their everyday affairs in the broad square before the

mosque of Wazir Kahn, these are the men who populate An Open-Air Restaurant at Lahore.

However, despite Lahore's contemporary associations with European political jockeying in

Central Asia, it is a work in much the same sunny mood as William Carpenter's watercolor View

of the Mosque of Wazir Ali Khan, Lahore (1856; Figure 7-16), with the emphasis on the everyday

lives of the local inhabitants.

Judging from Weeks' accounts the locals were getting on quite well without England or

Russia. Weeks described the experience of emerging into the square in front of the depicted

mosque as crossing a boundary, abruptly leaving behind the well-trimmed avenue, the horse-

drawn trams, red post office boxes and other reminders of Europe. In rich and evocative prose

he wrote of the scene in the shadow of the mosque:

62. Weeks, "Lahore and the Punjaub," 652–54.

63. Weeks, "Lahore and the Punjaub," 652.

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 Tailors and tailors' apprentices stitch all day at piles of dilapidated garments . . .
cobblers busy themselves with heaps of dusty old shoes, and in the middle of the
square there are open-air restaurants, where great kettles of tinned copper stand
upon platforms elevated above the ground and surrounded by rough benches;
sooty frying-pans sizzle on little clay furnaces . . . the benches are crowded with
customers, who have the appearance of being peasants from the outlying country,
or Pathan peddlers . . . A great deal of horse-shoeing and veterinary practice is
carried on in one corner, under a great tree, and there is always a sound of
hammering and clashing of metal from the smoky arches behind . . . The great
open court of the mosque is seldom thronged except at noon; a few school-boys
con their books under the eye of a master in one corner, and an occasional beggar
strolls in, and stretches himself out to sleep on the pavement . . . To those who
have been reared in other lands, in the fear of the stern sacristan and the autocratic
suisse, there is something broadly democratic in the faith of Islam as it is
practised to-day. While in most countries still under Mussulman dominion the
unbeliever is rigidly excluded from the mosque, the humblest of the faithful may
find there a refuge from the weather, sleep in the protecting shadow of its
cloisters, and bathe in the water of its tank.64

That Weeks' image is true to the sense of place, to the quiet hum of the everyday in the shelter of

the grand mosque of Wazir Khan, is confirmed by an 1895 photograph of the square (Figure

7-17).

At the 1889 Salon, An Open-Air Restaurant at Lahore eschewed the sensationalized East

in favor of the quotidian. It was a striking contrast to the 1889 Salon submission of Benjamin-

Constant, Le jour des funérailles, scène au Maroc, a "work of vast dimensions"65 that depicted a

dead Moroccan chief laid out for burial, surrounded by weapons and mourning women, and to

works of other Orientalist painters who relished transferring their fantasies of sex and violence to

canvas. Instead, An Open-Air Restaurant at Lahore invented conversations and invited

64. Weeks notes that "The stranger is made welcome to-day in any of the mosques of India . . ." Weeks,
"Lahore and the Punjaub," 665–66.
65. Theodore Child, "The Gallery: The Paris Salon of 1889," Art Amateur 21, no. 1 (June 1889): 7.

297
storytelling,66 though the essence of the painting's appeal is that its narrative and construction

appear uncontrived. This unaffected but nonetheless enticing quality is what captivated

Theodore Child:

This 'Open-air Restaurant at Lahore' has, furthermore, the merit of being the most
complete picture that Mr. Weeks has yet painted—the firmest, the simplest, and
the most direct piece of painting that he has accomplished.67

Yet it is due to the artist's meticulously plotted composition and balance of color that the viewer

feels as if he has just rambled down a dusty Lahore street only to stumble across a sudden

cultural divide, just as Weeks described. Studying the painting even for a few moments, the

viewer half expects the foreground figures in blue and gold to break from lunch, turn around

abruptly and inquire, "Who are you?"

There is something of that sense of boundary crossing and intrusion when considering the

tranquil scene The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra (Figure 7-14). The Pearl Mosque,

or Moti Masjid, "a perfectly balanced marriage of form, mass and scale," dates to the mid-

seventeenth century reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. It was intended for the use of the

royal court and reflects the preference for "exquisite yet relatively unembellished" white marble

for the emperor's private religious architecture.68 The view of roughly the right third of the

66. "An Out-door Restaurant in Lahore," Harper's Bazaar 23, no. 1 (Jan. 1890): 11.
67. Child, "American Artists at the Paris Salon," 321. In another review Child complained of the
"funereal, dolorous, or elegiac subjects" and "empty-eyed peasants and ugly old hags" that were so
noticeable in the Salon of 1889. Theodore Child, "The Gallery: The Paris Salon of 1889," 7.
68. Asher, 188. "The Moti Musjid stands as perfect as the day when the scaffoldings were removed . . .
Everything is the purest white marble—floor, pillars, roof. You can see nothing else—glittering, polished
marble everywhere." "A Dream in Marble, " New York Evangelist 45, no. 17 (Apr. 1874): 3.

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courtyard omits the three high, bulbous domes and numerous chattris that surmount the roof.

Instead of the imposing outline of the mosque against the Indian sky Weeks filled the canvas

with an expanse of white masonry, relieved by a small square of brilliant azure, the deep

shadows of arches, and the postures and costumes of the figures. Again Theodore Child

expressed the chief technical concerns that challenged the artist:

Over the facade of arches in the background the projecting roof casts a shadow,
and the vista of arcades within appears mistily illuminated by the reflected light
that glares upward from the white marble court-yard. On this ground of
immaculate smooth white marble are disposed figures in various attitudes, some
washing in the tank, others dreaming or sleeping, one in the foreground reading
the Koran, while outside the mosque in the middle distance stands a row of men
praying, their backs turned to the spectator—Afghans, northern Indians of various
castes, and Persians with their round skull-caps. In the polished marble of the
floor as well as in the water of the tank the bright colors of the Indian and Persian
costumes are reflected. In this very clever picture Mr. Weeks has dealt
successfully with a difficult scheme of color. 69

The painting hosts a wealth of intriguing detail: the finely scalloped arches, the various

attitudes of the figures, the differently patterned garments, the pigeons strutting on the tiles. Yet

the rich detail does not confuse the eye or fragment the composition; outlines and edges sharpen

and soften, as if captured alternately by peripheral or direct vision. A thin, gray line defines the

architectural elements although the deft use of subtle color conveys the fold of a garment or a

change in plane. Standing to the right of center, the receding diagonal of the tank edge pulls the

viewer into the scene, creating the distinct illusion of presence and proximity to the central

figures, a characteristic typical of Weeks' major paintings.

69. Child, "American Artists at the Paris Salon," 321.

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 Edwin Weeks used color to unify these disparate elements while simultaneously tackling

the difficult problem of a white-on-white tonal scheme. This challenge was commonly taken up

by nineteenth century artists, including James McNeill Whistler in Symphony in White, No. 1:

The White Girl (1862) and John Singer Sargent with his 1880 Salon entry, Fumée d'ambre gris

(which Théophile Gautier called Symphonie en blanc majeur). The Goupil guide to the 1880

exhibition noted: "Ces variations sur une même couleur ne sont pas ce qu'il ya de plus difficile

dans le metier; mais enfin il faut déjà être savant et très savant pour en jouer comme M.

Sargent."70 Like Sargent, Weeks carefully manipulated the application, variation and repetition

of color to achieve what first appears to be a highly monochromatic work. However, the

predominant tones of rich cream and eggshell are underlaid and overlaid by carefully modulated

values of the hues seen more purely in the robes of the worshippers. For example, the same

muted reds and tans repeat in the roof ornamentation, the reflective surface of the tank, the

standing figures, the tiles and the plinth surrounding the tank. In the dead center of the painting,

one turban, a cardinal red counterpoint to the striking blue sky, draws the focus.

Textural variations further interrupt the planar expanse of white. Short, often smudged

brushstrokes break up visual continuity. The artist laid on paint roughly in some areas so that

selected elements—the scalloped edges of the arches, certain garments, the pigeons' feathers—

protrude from the canvas and catch the light differently, breaking the gaze. In other areas, the

canvas is almost bare.

Weeks' self-definition as a "colorist" becomes apparent when comparing the tempered,

70. Goupil et Cie, L'Exposition des Beaux-Arts (Salon de 1880) (Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 1880), [n.p.].

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soft-focus monochromaticism of The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra with Vasili

Vereshchagin's more severe Pearl Mosque at Delhi (The Private Mosque of the Great Moguls in

the Palace of Delhi, 1876–79; Figure 7-18). The war artist and pacifist Vereshchagin, a former

student of Jean-Léon Gérôme, was the most famous Russian painter of the era and one of the few

major Western artists to paint scenes of India and Central Asia. His highly controversial brand of

photographic realism that depicted the horrors of war (the "slaughtered, shot, beheaded,

hanged")71 drew huge crowds and considerable critical acclaim in London, Paris, New York and

Chicago. Though Vereshchagin painted a number of views of the Pearl Mosque at Agra (dating

to about 1874), it is his colossal Pearl Mosque at Delhi that is conceptually closest to Weeks' The

Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra.

This outsized painting, some thirteen by sixteen feet, is a virtuosic turn in perspectival

drawing. The cropped corner view, the glimpse of clear blue sky, the bisected tank, the attitudes

of the worshippers and other readily apparent compositional similarities suggest that it may have

inspired Weeks, perhaps when it was on exhibit in the autumn of 1887 at the Grovesnor Gallery

in London. But the similarities stop there. Weeks' looser handling of paint, his generous

application of color and the relaxed, varying postures and interactions of the worshippers atop

the tank differ markedly from Vereshchagin's more clinical depiction of the massive marble

edifice and solemn, seemingly unconnected figures. Both artists used shadow to distinguish

planes and create depth, but Weeks created a luminous quality by emphasizing the glare of the

71. Quoting Vereshchagin, "Notes on Current Events," British Architect 28 (July–Dec. 1887): 425–26.

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sun off of the flat surfaces of the huge columns and connecting eaves.72

As a result, the moods of the paintings differ dramatically. Vereshchagin's work is

distant, reserved, an historical record in tribute to the majesty of Mughal architecture. Weeks'

The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra is more personal, approachable, and experiential;

it is an invitation to immerse oneself in the atmosphere of the courtyard and common religious

practice. Enhanced by its original Lockwood deForest frame, it is certainly among Weeks' most

accomplished paintings.73

The Salon of 1890: Le Temple d'Or d'Amritsar (79.5 x 117 in.)

Thematically and, to some extent, compositionally related to The Hour of Prayer at the

Pearl Mosque, Agra is Weeks' 1890 Salon submission, The Golden Temple of Amritsar (Figure

7-19). The Golden Temple (more formally, the Harmandir Sahib) is the most famous Sikh

Gurdwara, built by the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan, in the late sixteenth-century and rebuilt in the

eighteenth century. As referenced, it is located in Amritsar in northernmost India, according to

Weeks a short thirty miles east of Lahore.

Weeks' description of the Golden Temple for his Harper's Magazine article "Lahore and

the Punjaub" closely corresponds to the elements depicted in the painting. Accompanied by a

72. Writing of J.M.W. Turner's successes as the greatest "interpreter of nature" of any time or country: " .
. . at last he attained to the zenith of a landscape painter's ambition—the power of rendering sunlight in
something of its truth and fulness, a task which had baffled all his predecessors and still baffles his
followers and imitators," N. D'Anvers, Elementary History of Art (New York: Scribner, Welford and
Armstrong, 1875), 487.
73. Weeks wrote admiringly of deForest's efforts to popularize Indian art in "Notes on Indian Art,"
although he does not mention actually meeting him.

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warning to readers "biased and hampered by preconceived notions of what is correct according

to the canons of conventional good taste"—perhaps aimed at critic Léonce Benedite, who noted

"des pagodes aux monstrueuses orfèvreries"—Weeks' lavish prose conveys the scene:

From the border of the tank, which lies in the afternoon shadow, the Golden
Temple gives one the impression of a glittering jewel, or of some rare old
Byzantine casket wrought in enamel and studded with gems. Small and compact,
glowing with color and scintillating with light, its mirrored image reaching far
down into the purple depth of reflected sky, it has at first sight a glamour of
unreality, like an opium vision of De Quincey, or the "pleasure dome of Kubla
Khan." Two colors predominate, the gold of the upper part and the clustered
domes, and the white marble of its base, toned and softened by the faint color of
its inlaid flowers; the curtained doors and windows add flashes of scarlet. In its
environment of deep-toned dusky purple sky and water it has the intensity of a
luminous point or focus of light, and the dark masses of foliage behind are of
great value in the landscape.74

Again Weeks emphasized the striking effects of light: "The impression which one receives at

first, and which remains in one's mind as a lasting souvenir, is that of a blaze of color and

light . . ."75 Even in this study of late afternoon the "glare effect" is a principal concern, here

commanding a broad horizontal white stripe in mid-canvas, a more pronounced version of the

similar effect realized in The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra. The most intense

representation of light hovers at the center of the canvas, accented by the dark silhouette of the

angular, bare-chested figure just below. Thicker applications of paint to the trees, contrasted

with rather thin covering of paint elsewhere, further alters the viewer's perception of light and

proximity.

74. Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), referenced by Weeks in

"Lahore and the Punjaub," 669.
75. Weeks, "Lahore and the Punjaub," 672.

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 Likewise the paintings share sharply receding right-to-left diagonals that slash deeply

into the background at virtually identical angles. In The Golden Temple the principal diagonal is

offset by opposing lines formed by the tiles, a pattern that Weeks manipulated to lead the eye

directly to the central figure and the temple. The diagonals are countered by the verticality of the

temple architecture lengthened by its reflection, and by the bright horizontal center line (less

discernible but still present in The Hour of Prayer). The acute angles and strong linearity

combine to break the picture into a set of intersecting wedges and planes, not unlike the

framework animating some of the cityscapes of Weeks' close contemporary, Gustave Caillebotte.

Detail softens and complicates the geometric structure. The irregular shapes of the

thickly painted foliage, the circular baskets repeated in the domes, the mound of orange-hued

flowers, the reflected rhythms of the scarlet window coverings, the stems and petals scattered on

the tessellated pavement and the variously posed figures interrupt the gaze. To the left a flower

seller trades in sacred offerings. An older man, "priest or pundit," sits deeply absorbed in "a

ponderous book" as his companions listen intently. The man seated to the right, his arm an

awkward mirror of the tree trunk, contemplates the gilded temple and its reflections in the sacred

lake before him. For some critics, like Léonce Benedite, it was too much of a glorious thing: "Il

y a peut-être un excès de détails dans les orfèvreries du temple, qui atténue un peu l'effet . . ."76

For Weeks, however, the competing and colliding visuals failed to disturb the affecting serenity

of the view:

76. Weeks, "Lahore and the Punjaub," 669; Léonce Benedite, "La peinture Orientaliste aux Salons de
1890," in L'artiste, vol. 2 (Paris: 1890), 89–90.

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 All these personages, pacing slowly and noiselessly along the tank, with always
the same background of illuminated water, are like the figures in a decorative
frieze, and one cannot but question whether another shrine exists so happily
surrounded, and where all discordant elements are more completely shut out.77

Ultimately, if Benedite was not in complete accord with Weeks, he nonetheless admired

the work as grounded in a genuine sense of place; the shaded figures, the bustling promenade,

the flights of pigeons, the intense blue of the sky "ont un accent local, un goȗt de terroir avec le

caractère pittoresque qui convient à une vraie oeuvre d'art." 78 The novel sense of place that

Weeks conveyed in The Golden Temple is heightened when the painting is compared to another

nearly contemporary work of the same subject, The Golden Temple of Amritsar (c. 1886; Figure

7-20) by Kapur Singh of Amritsar, one of the most famous Sikh artists of the nineteenth century.

Kapur Singh had long trained in the Mughal tradition but also was greatly accomplished in

Western style oil painting. Singh's canvas, revealing his mastery of eighteenth-century European

styles, echoes the palette and formality of Canaletto. The comparison confounds the expected

relationships among artistic training, cultural affinity, patrons' expectations and visual

expression.

India at the Salon: The Later Contributions: Les obsèques d'un fakir à Benarés (Salon, 1892)
Les barbiers de Saharanpore (Salon, 1895)
Une bayadère indienne (Salon, 1900)

Perhaps not wanting to be too predictable, after seven years of exhibiting Indian subjects

Edwin Lord Weeks veered in a more westerly direction. To the Salon of 1891 he contributed a

77. Weeks, "Lahore and the Punjaub," 671.

78. Benedite, 89–90.

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work set in southern Spain, Trois mendiants de Cordoue (66 x 98.5 inches; Figure 7-21), a study

of three men in various attitudes of listlessness sitting in the full sun along an embankment.

Though this painting was a particular favorite of the artist and "was considered his best work by

the Spanish painters Bonnat, Madrazo, Melida, and others,"79 the New York Times wondered

"why Edwin Lord Weeks sends anything but his own, his very own Eastern scenes, where he

need recognize no master . . ." The review aligned with those of French critics to declare the

picture a success, but it also made clear that by the early nineties Weeks had become indelibly

associated with the grand scenes of Indian life.80

Les obsèques d'un fakir à Benarés (Figure 7-22), submitted to the Salon of 1892, marked

Weeks' return to Indian subject matter, but with a focus on urban ritual rather than the

architectural and historical references of some of his earlier works. Thematically, The Funeral of

a Fakir in Benares recalls Weeks' 1885 Salon success, The Last Voyage, also set on the banks of

the Ganges in Varanasi. However, Funeral of a Fakir exaggerates what by 1892 had become

Weeks' signature structure: sharply receding diagonals, cropped framing and integration into the

viewer's space. With the painting hung a feet few from the floor the viewer is positioned right in

the path of the procession, not set off comfortably to one side. As the viewer studies the

painting, the lead figure seemingly breaks the picture plane to march down the steps of the quay,

79. Weeks to Ed. S. Coates [President, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts], 13 July 1892, Steamer
Cambodge, copy of letter in Box 7, File 2, Edwin Lord Weeks Exhibition, Jan.–Feb. 1976, Art Gallery
Exhibition Files, 1941-2004, UA 9/3/1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New
Hampshire Library, Durham, New Hampshire, USA.
80. L. K., "Art at the Salon's Show," New York Times, 26 May 1891. The work was also exhibited at the
World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and at the Philadelphia Art Club Exhibition, where it was
awarded a gold medal.

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the small, unwieldy cortege set to brush by on its way past.

This kind of participatory spatial illusion is akin to that sought by Weeks' close

contemporary, fellow expatriate Julius L. Stewart (1855–1919), in On the Yacht "Namouna",

Venice (1890; Figure 7-23). Both On the Yacht "Namouna" and The Funeral of a Fakir elicit the

viewer's physical engagement with the painting. The former attempts to distort the viewer's

equilibrium and balance, the latter signals to the viewer to step quickly aside. For the European

gallery attendee Stewart's painting was likely the less alarming imaginary circumstance, for

Weeks' Funeral placed the viewer uncomfortably proximate to a decidedly suspect and alien

class.

Though it was widely reproduced in the popular press, with full pages in Le Monde

Illustré and the Illustrated London News, Funeral of a Fakir generated little critical attention.81

The New York Times found it among the "noteworthy." In a three-column report on the Salon, M.

G. Van Rensselaer of the Boston Transcript, the newspaper that championed Edwin Weeks in his

early days, gave it nothing more than a passing mention.82 Agnes Farley Millar, correspondent

81. "Beaux-arts," Le Monde Illustré no. 1856 (22 Oct. 1892): np; " 'A Fakir's Funeral, India' after E. L.
Weeks, in the Salon des Champ Elysées, 1892," Illustrated London News, 22 Oct. 1892, 525. Other
notices include: " . . . enfin l'Américan lord Weeks, pour clore ici notre énumération, continue à se
montrer, dans les Obsèques d'un fakir à Bénarès, le peintre sincère et très heureusement coloriste du pays
prestigieux que fécondent les flots sacrés du Gange," "La peinture au salon des Champs-Elysées,"
L'artiste, n.s. 3, no. 22 (1892): 338–39; " . . . the 'old Salon' offers nothing out of the ordinary . . . . Of
Americans Charles Spraque Pearce's 'Annunciation' and Edwin Lord Weeks's 'Burial of a Fakir at
Benares' are perhaps the most noteworthy," H. F., "A Return to Barbarism," New York Times, 1 May 1882,
np; "and Mr. Weeks, also an American, whose pictures of Indian bazaar life are so cleverly rendered,
contributes 'A Fakir's Funeral at Benares,' " "The Salons," Academy 1049 (11 June 1892 ): 573. The
painting was also reproduced in the San Francisco Chronicle of 24 April 1892, 12.
82. "The Week in Art. Pictures of the Paris Salon," Boston Evening Transcript, 28 May 1892, 18.

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for the Independent, was bored and unimpressed:

Edwin Lord Weeks can paint Oriental scenes; that we all know and have known
for years; his "Burial of a Fakir at Benares" is as fine as anything he has ever
shown us. A procession of natives are trooping along a quay; the dead body in the
midst of them is borne on a red bier; a figure precedes the body with a pan of
burning coals; this figure is perhaps the most defective in the picture. The
drawing is not as good as usual in Mr. Weeks's figures; but what a fine scheme of
color! And how cleverly the figures preserve each one their personality, in spite
of the confused massing of the groups! 83

With the closing of the 1892 Salon Weeks began to prepare for his upcoming journey

over the ancient caravan routes through Central Asia with Theodore Child, English art critic,

travel writer and Paris agent for Harper's. Child, who had instigated the trip, was in search of

material to substantiate his theories of the influence of Egyptian art on that of India and China as

well as to generate material for future magazine articles on "Living India." Weeks was to

illustrate the planned series. As the departure neared, on account of "the political situation and

the civil war in Afghanistan" they were forced to reroute the trip through Persia.84 Two months

into the arduous overland journey Child died of typhoid. Weeks carried on alone and fulfilled

the agreement with Harper's by agreeing to write and illustrate two essays, the first of which

appeared in October 1893.85 The articles were so well received that Harper's engaged Weeks for

another seven; the collected series was published as From the Black Sea Through Persia and

83. Agnes Farley Millar, "Fine Arts.: Salon des Champs Elysers [sic]. American Exhibitors,"
Independent 44 (16 June 1892): 7.
84. Weeks, From the Black Sea through Persia and India, vii.
85. Harper, 592; Henry Mills Alden to Weeks, 3 February 1893, quoted in Harper, 595. The first article
in the series was "From the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf by Caravan. I. From Trebizond to Tabreez,"
Harper's New Monthly Magazine 87, 521 (Oct. 1893): 651-70. Previously Weeks had published "Street
Life in India" for the August 1890 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine.

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India (1895).

Returning to Paris too late and too distracted to submit anything to the 1893 Salon,

Weeks mined his Persian experiences for the following year's entry, Le chargement de la

caravane;—matin en Perse. With a couple of exceptions, from that year forward Persian themes

dominated nearly all of Edwin Weeks' contributions to the annual Paris Salon exhibitions. This

shift in geographic focus is telling; judging from the reviews of the 1895 Salon, Weeks'

preoccupation with India, and perhaps his inspiration, was wavering.

Les Barbiers de Saharanpore (Figure 7-24), accepted for the Salon of 1895, departs from

Weeks' usual formula grounded in strong architectural components, although it retains the

underlying structure of diagonals receding from lower right to upper left. Its interwoven rhythms

of color and pattern, the intensity of full sunlight, the undifferentiated values that tilt the ground

plane upward and the scumbled brushwork are technical and compositional approaches that

complicate the more obvious subject. The viewer is once again positioned as if accidentally

stumbling into a lively square; in this case it is the youth in white, clasping a small hand mirror,

whose wincing glance invites the onlooker's participation and amused sympathy.86

Weeks would certainly have protested any association of this work with academic styles

emanating from a strictly French perspective. But a few years later that is precisely the

designation that Royal Cortissoz, art critic for the New York Tribune, slapped on it in his review

86. "The village barber and his wife have a position above that of many other castes, owing to the variety
and importance of their social functions. Hindoos alone have many different ways of wearing the hair,
and we found amusement and edification at Saharunpoor in watching a row of these barbers seated on the
ground, with their cases of tools beside them, as they operated on the heads of their constantly changing
clientèle," Weeks, From the Black Sea through Persia and India, 354.

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of the American fine arts section of the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. Cortissoz deemed

Weeks' paintings "un-American," along with those of Walter Gay, Gari Melchers, Julian Story,

Walter MacEwen, F. A. Bridgman, and William Dannat. For Cortissoz, these artists belonged to

France, having "exchanged their birthright for a mess of pottage." They did not take part in what

the critic seemed to propose as the great collective duty of American artists, to "tell the foreigner

what America is doing in her studios at home to lay the foundations of an art which that foreigner

will some day come to America to see." Cortissoz had particularly cutting remarks for Les

Barbiers de Saharanpore:

Mr. E. L. Weeks, in his Eastern subjects, especially the large picture of some
barbers of India at work in the street, handles his brushes with flexibility and
precision, gains a little breadth, a little luminosity—and leaves us absolutely cold.
The scene is picturesque; the picture is commonplace, the sort of thing which one
glances at in the pages of a magazine and then eternally forgets. 87

Just three months earlier, in a review of the Paris Salon of 1900, a different critic from the

New York Tribune applauded the advances of several of the same American artists that Cortissoz

so thoroughly disparaged in July. Noting the "very strong work among the American canvases,"

that critic found nothing wanting in Weeks' Salon contribution Une bayadère Indienne. Rather,

the earlier reviewer singled out the "exquisite bit of coloring," the "rich red and blue tones of the

bayadère making one of his most effective compositions."88 In a rather noncommittal paragraph

87. R[oyal] C[ortissoz], "American Art in Paris," New York Tribune, 22 July 1900, II, 1 col. 1. To this
exhibition Weeks also submitted The Awakening of Nourredin (c. 1899) and On the Road to Ispahan (c.
1896).
88. C.I.B., "Paris. Opening of the Champs Elysees Salon," New York Tribune, 8 April 1900, 2.

310
from another Salon review, the Boston Evening Transcript called it "notable." 89

The sharp differences among reviewers of Edwin Lord Weeks' later work reflected the

shifting aesthetic grounds occupied by artists and art critics at the turn of the century. In the

salons of European capitals and particularly in the grand halls of the international exhibitions, as

the century drew to a close more was at stake than expressive innovation, critical opinion and

artistic reputation. In this era of American cultural insecurity and expanding global ambitions,

art was an international power play, another way to sling America to the forefront of the world

stage. Countless American newspaper articles dissected the successes or failures of American

artists relative to their European rivals. American critics and patrons demanded work that was

identifiably "American," produced by Americans who had retained strong native ties despite

training abroad. As Royal Cortissoz observed when writing about the Paris Universal Exposition

of 1900:

This exhibition revives, and then shelves forever, the old question of whether it is
good for an American painter to come here and train himself irrevocably in
French methods, or, having learned in Paris some needed lessons, to return to his
native land and there develop along his own lines.

This last requirement, prompted by an increasingly clamorous nationalism, was a critical

hurdle that Weeks, long a resident of Paris, could not surmount. Though in letters and articles he

more than once emphasized, even insisted, on his American citizenship, Edwin Weeks

demonstrated no interest in taking up America as a subject nor in living there for extended

periods. For most artists of his generation, success in the ateliers, galleries and salons of Paris

89. "The Fine Arts," Boston Evening Transcript, 1 May 1895, 6.

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was a prerequisite to success in America. As with his near contemporary Henry James, Europe

provided intellectual independence, critical insight and transnational perspective that Weeks

could not have achieved had he remained in Boston.

More importantly, throughout his career Weeks was most inspired by the light, color and

everyday life of the East; his life's work focused on recording and imagining scenes of North

African and Indian life and history, and conveying the richness of those cultures to Europe and

America. For the greater part of his career these mingled geographic and cultural allegiances had

signified a remarkable breadth of interest and experience that defined a rare level of professional

accomplishment. But in the closing years of the century perceptions changed. Cosmopolitan

and transnational, Weeks simply did not fit the latest definition of the American artist.

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 Conclusion

"I have had everything; I knew it all."

After departing Bombay for Paris in March of 1893, Edwin Lord Weeks never returned to

India. He left no indication why. Perhaps his vision of India was too compromised by the

endless miles of strung telegraph wire, the sprawling railroad network and the burgeoning

architectural monuments to British rule. Or maybe he was simply looking for another personal

and professional frontier. In the Paris Salons of the later 1890s Weeks' scenes of India gave way

to those of Persia, which he first came to know when traveling there with Theodore Child for a

few months in 1892. In the mid-nineties Weeks wrote about the clatter and bustle of

modernizing India versus "the silence of unprogressive Persia" where "the splendid monuments

of its former glory" stand "abandoned to picturesque but lamentable decay."1 But shifting his

subject focus to Persia did little to rekindle critical attentions. His last major paintings, inspired

by The Thousand and One Nights, suggest an artist who is reaching backward rather than

forward.

Overtaken by new aesthetic theories and experimental styles, the urgent preoccupations

of modern life, advances in color photography and the shifting social role of the professional

artist, by the end of the nineteenth century Edwin Weeks' images of "the East" were decidedly

passé. This was especially true in America, where a rising generation of critics and patrons was

eager to establish a strong national style untainted by European influence. Weeks' paintings,

1. Weeks, From the Black Sea Through Persia to India, 161, 308.

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once considered remarkable for their boldness, individualism and American point of view, fell

sharply out of favor in his home country. The artist was keenly aware of his declining reputation.

In 1897 Weeks wrote to John Beatty, organizer of the Pittsburgh International Exhibition, that

"from a commercial point of view I have the honor of being perhaps the most unpopular of

American painters—in America."2 Within a few years after the turn of the century the critical

enthusiasms that had once bracketed Weeks with expatriates John Singer Sargent and James

McNeill Whistler had all but evaporated.

Weeks did not live long enough to witness the near total eclipse of his career. The

"celebrated genre painter, explorer and author"3 died at his home in Paris on November 16, 1903,

after an illness of several months.4 In "Death of Great American Painter," the New York Herald

commented:

Mr. Weeks had been unwell for some time, being confined to the house the greater
part of two months, but his condition was not considered serious, so that his death
was a painful surprise to his many friends in Paris.
His health had been precarious for a year or two; but he would hardly admit
the fact, and it may be said that his wonderful will-power long supported him
against the encroachment of disease. It is thought that fevers contracted in India
were responsible for the complications that finally resulted fatally.5

2. Weeks to John W. Beatty, dated "Monday" 7 [1897], New York [Century Association letterhead],
Edwin Lord Weeks Papers, [ca. 1885-1976], Box 1, Folder 1, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC.
3. "Edwin Lord Weeks Passes Away in Paris," Washington Times, 18 November 1903, 9.
4. U.S. Department of State records indicate a date of death of November 16, 1903. Other sources
report that the date of Weeks' death was November 17th. National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA), Washington, DC, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group RG59-Entry 849,
Box Number 26, Box Description Aug. 8, 1903–Mar. 25, 1904 A–Z.
5. "Death of Great American Painter," New York Herald (Paris), 18 November 1903, 1. Much the same
story was repeated in various newspapers, including "Noted Painter Dies Suddenly," San Francisco Call,

314
It was also reported through the years that Weeks died of "Bright's disease" (after Dr. Richard

Bright), an historical classification that refers to inflammation of the kidney. Weeks did not die

from Bright's disease nor from a mysterious Indian fever. The cause is clarified in a poignant

letter from Fannie Weeks to family friend Alexander Twombly, penned a month after her

husband's death:

When I tell you that he seemed to go like a flash—slip away from me, only staid
in bed 48 hours by the Doctors express orders—It was acute Diabetes that killed
him, & now, too late I can look back & see it began as long ago as last March, for
all the Spring he was consumed with an unquenchable thirst, & had a big appetite
but what he ate did him no good, he only got thinner & thinner. The Doctors did
not find it out until Sept & were treating him all spring & summer for a variety of
ailments none of which was the right one—and [several?] themselves too
astonished for speech when they realized what they had been doing. —Put not
your faith in Doctors! —However he did not suffer much had no aches or pains,
only grew gradually weaker & seemed at the last just to slip away from me—not
expecting to die at all always “going to get better” & telling me “not to worry” I
cannot yet realize that he has gone away from me forever, & I shall never have
him any more to lean on & to direct my life. —& without him everything seems a
blank.6

18 November 1903, 9 col. 5.

6. Fannie H. Weeks to Alexander Twombly, 23 December 1903, Paris, Box 2, Folder 002 0031,
Alexander Twombly Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University. Fannie traveled to the United
States not long after, remaining for about a year and a half. She then returned to Paris, where she was
living at the outbreak of World War I. In poor health, her brother, Dr. William Hale, came to Paris to treat
her. A passport application records that she intended to return to the United States "within two years or
sooner if the war is over." American expatriate artist Elizabeth Nourse accompanied Fannie to the
passport office. To date I have not found any indication of Fannie's return to the U.S., or indeed anything
of her subsequent whereabouts. Mrs. Fannie Hale Weeks, National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA), Washington, DC, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906–March 31, 1925, Collection Number:
ARC Identifier 583830 / MLR Number A1 534, NARA Series M1490, Roll # 341.

315
 A letter from Weeks' cousin, Annie Lord, confirms the misdiagnosis. Lord had dined

nightly with Weeks and his wife during her three-week stay in Paris that ended a little over a

month before the artist died. She wrote of Weeks striking out in "a new departure" centered on

portraiture, of his "stunning" latest work entitled The Vase d'Or [?], and his backlog of orders for

paintings. She was impressed by his stoicism and selflessness:

not wanting one minute to dwell in his illness—a hero after doctors verdict of
diabeties [sic]—& only two days before he died I had a letter from him full of
good spirits, saying the doctors found all the engines working well, and if he
could eat enough "grease" [?] he might pull through.

Whatever Weeks believed about his illness, he put on brave front for his family:

Neither he or his wife seemed to take in his serious condition. I think if his doctor,
who treated him for malaria, had been a little more careful at first the disease
would not have made such headway. He told me he didn't mind dying but he
wanted while he lived to be a man and not a useless thing—adding "I have had
everything. I knew it all—" 7

Weeks' funeral was held at the American Church in Paris. Honorary pallbearers included

author C. Inman Barnard and expatriate American artists Henry Bisbing, Walter McEwen, Gari

Melchers, Julius Stewart, Harry Van Der Weyden, and Weeks' tennis partner and rival for the title

of greatest American Orientalist painter, Frederick Bridgman. Paying their respects were marine

painter Alexander Harrison, secretary of the American Art Association H. W. Faulkner, artist

Lionel Walden, Mrs. Charles Sprague Pearce, and art curator Sara Hallowell. Weeks was buried

in Billancourt cemetery.8 A few months later the Society of French Artists paid tribute to Weeks

7. Annie L. Lord to Alexander Twombly, 22 November [1903], South Berwick, Maine, Box 2, Folder
002002 21, Alexander Twombly Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.
8. "Funeral of Mr. Weeks," New York Herald (Paris), 18 November 1903, 1.

316
at the 1904 Paris Salon by exhibiting "in a place of honor, appropriately decked with crȇpe"

Weeks' unfinished A Game of Chess, a scene from The Thousand and One Nights.9

Edwin Lord Weeks: The Artist as Globalist

Over the course of his career the subjects of Weeks' paintings and writings, from

Morocco to India to Armenia, engaged international political as well as aesthetic concerns. This

was evident early on, when in 1881 Le Gaulois and La Vie Moderne cast Weeks as the fearless

artist-adventurer who braved the perilous Moroccan interior to bring forth authentic views of a

"country at war." Harper's Magazine heightened the artist-explorer associations by naming

Weeks' trans-Persian/Indian expedition among the magazine's most vital foreign assignments. In

this 1892 notice touting Weeks' and Theodore Child's planned journey, even Henry Stanley got

second billing:

The arrangements made by the publishers of Harper's Magazine for the ensuing
year include important enterprises in America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, engaging
the work of popular writers and artists upon subjects of vital moment and interest
to all readers . . . . Henry M. Stanley, the distinguished African explorer, will tell
the story of the African Slave-trade, bringing it down to its present interesting
status, with graphic illustrations.
The enterprise of the greatest moment and magnitude is that undertaken in the
interest of the Magazine by Theodore Child, so well known to our readers in
connection with his timely and comprehensive articles on the Spanish Republics
of South America. Mr. Child will contribute during the coming year several
articles, the result of a special trip to India. These articles will, on the one hand,
show England in the face of her great rival, Russia, and on the other, will show

9. "The work, in soft, luminous tones, is greatly admired. It represents two figures, a man and a woman,
seated on a terrace, playing chess." "Topics in Paris," New York Daily Tribune, 1 May 1904, 4 col. 4.

317
 the English social contacts with native India. They will be illustrated by Edwin
Lord Weeks, who accompanies Mr. Child.10

Over time, Weeks' paintings' marketability eroded, but not his personal authority on Asian and

North African matters. Weeks' carefully crafted public image provided him with the cultural

traction to engage issues beyond the brief of the typical artist. This is evident in an 1895 review

in The Watchman that opened with:

It is high praise to say of Mr. Weeks's "From the Black Sea through Persia and
India" that we have already given it a place on our shelves beside Henry Norman's
and George Curzon's works on the Far East . . . it contains the material for large
and just deductions upon the social and political conditions and relations of that
extensive region between Asia Minor and Northern India which the movement of
events is rapidly bringing within the European system.11

Similarly, in 1900 the New York Times noted of Weeks' forthcoming Scribner's Magazine article:

In the same number, Edwin Lord Weeks, the painter and writer, will present an
illustrated article entitled "Two Centres of Moorish Art." His visits to the little-
known cities of Morocco will be particularly interesting at this time, when that
North African state is in imminent danger of being invaded by the French from
Algeria.12

As the century closed, Edwin Weeks' insights into the cultures of Asia and Africa were

still valued even as his paintings of those regions were increasingly marginalized.13 In a short

10. "Harper's Magazine for 1893," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 85 (Nov. 1892): 1–3 at 3.
11. "Among the Books. Edwin Lord Weeks, The Oriental Painter as Writer," Watchman 85, no. 52 (24
Dec. 1903): 15.
12. "Notes and News. Items of the Day," New York Times, 2 June 1900, n.p. col. 3.
13. Weeks was admired by contemporary literary critics for his perceptive cultural insights and engaging
tone. In a review of From the Black Sea Through Persia and India, the Literary World cited the author's
"highly intellectual qualities," adding "It is difficult to say which leaves the most marked impression, the
grace and vividness and picturesqueness of Mr. Weeks' literary style, or the number, brilliancy, and
beauty" of the illustrations. Moreover, the reviewer felt that Weeks was fully up to the complex demands
of the subject: ". . . he leaves his readers face to face with the momentous civic and social and economic
questions which now confront India with the feeling that they have seen much and seen it under rare

318
chapter devoted to Weeks in Aims and Ideals of Representative American Painters (1901), John

Rummel pondered critics' contentious demands that American artists paint American subjects.

He argued that an artist must paint "what attracts him most;" that if he is "to express the best that

is in him, he must be allowed to follow the bent of his own genius." Concerning Weeks,

Rummel posed two important questions that remain relevant over a hundred years later: "But are

not the intellectual and the spiritual life of a nation to be interpreted, too? And does not an

American artist's impression of a foreign scene or a foreign incident reveal something of the

mental life of the nation of which he is a part?"14 Put differently, should not a nation with global

ambitions foster in its artists and writers a curiosity that transcends its borders?

These questions strike at fundamental issues that have complicated evaluations of Edwin

Lord Weeks' paintings in his lifetime and now. As an American artist professionally trained in

Paris, who resided abroad and specialized in scenes of the "East" (particularly British India),

Weeks eluded ready nationalist classification. The British called out his independent American

point of view; the French referred to him as Lord Weeks; the Americans found him too French.

Reproached by some contemporary critics for an insufficient allegiance to American subjects,

and later by art historians for academic ties and ideological transgressions, since his death it has

conditions of advantage." "Holiday Publications. The Black Sea, Persia and India," Literary World 26,
no. 24 (Nov. 1895): 421.
14. John Rummel, E. M. Berlin, Aims and Ideals of Representative American Painters (Buffalo, NY: np,
1901), 73–74. Some of Weeks' projects with international political overtones remain to be thoroughly
investigated, including his paintings of Persia, his drawings for Rudyard Kipling's Kim, (serialized by
McClure's Magazine beginning in December 1900), and Weeks' many illustrations for the Harper's
Weekly series, "The Troubles in Armenia," that brought extensive coverage to the Ottoman Empire's
massacre of the indigenous population in the mid-1890s.

319
been simplest either to ignore Weeks or dismiss him as a half-strength version of Jean-Léon

Gérôme.

This serves neither Weeks nor Gérôme nor the broader understanding of nineteenth-

century American art. Recent scholarship attempts to disentangle Weeks from the French

Orientalists and to reposition his aesthetic concerns as consistent with those of the foremost

American artists of his time (an effort initiated by critics R.A.M. Stevenson and Robert Sherard

in the mid-1880s and 1890s). Admittedly this reassessment implies disruptive questions about

the practice and value of academic art, and the idea of variant branches of modernism. Equally

problematic are Weeks' subjects, that insistently raise the issue of whether his paintings must be

read as expressions of the discourse of possession and control and the dangers of "otherness."15

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. In his brief discussion of The Arab Gunsmith (c.

1880; Figure C-1), Brian Allen argued strongly that Weeks brought a vital sense of agency to his

depictions of local scenes and figures:

Rather than depict figures that are depraved, fallen, feminine, or lazy, Weeks gives
us a collection of men, all of whom are black, virile, dynamic, armed and, because
of their "otherness" (both racially as well as culturally), potentially dangerous. . . .
a close look at the painting hardly shows a denigrating archaicism. The method of
production is slow but nonetheless efficient. The painting in fact depicts
something akin to an assembly line, with one gun fashioned at the forge, another
inspected by the entry to the forge, possibly by another craftsman, a third

15. The presentation of Weeks' subjects and figures were in marked contrast to works with more
pointedly ethnographic concerns (such as John Forbes Watson's and John William Kaye's The People of
India, 1868–75; Rudolph Swoboda's mid-1880s portraits of Indians for Osborne House; Herbert Risley's
The People of India, 1908; and James D. Anderson's Peoples of India, 1913), as well as to widely-held
opinion ("For the British after 1857, the Indian Muslim became an almost subhuman creature, to be
classified in unembarrassedly racist imperial literature alongside such other despised and subject
specimens, such as Irish Catholics or 'the Wandering Jew,' " Dalrymple, 440).

320
 demonstrated to an attentive onlooker, and the fourth held by a man on horseback
who seems ready to go shooting. It is not about weakness and depravity but
strength, productivity, and purpose.16

On the other hand, one could argue that this village forge is a far cry from nineteenth century

European arms and munitions factories, that the rifles depicted are antiquated and inferior, and

that by extension the whole region is ripe for European incursions. Both of these interpretations

are potent and plausible. It is the very strength of each of these conflicting positions, anchored in

different ideologies, that argues for Edwin Lord Weeks' independent expression as an artist, as a

keenly observant American abroad in a world that was "sprawling, tangled, contradictory,

elaborate."17

This "simultaneity of multiple meanings" complicates and enriches Edwin Lord Weeks'

paintings. They are amalgamations of personal experience, study, imagination and socio-

political commentary, inspired not only by "on the spot" experiences in North Africa, India and

Persia, but also drawing widely from French and British literary and visual sources. In this

sense, they are triangulations of the colonial imagination, made bolder and more relevant through

the artist's reputation for daring excursions in search of the authentic.

Granted, that authenticity was manipulated in service to the artist's individual sensibilities

as well as to prevailing fin de siècle standards. But what captivated audiences is that they

believed that the manipulations never undermined the fundamental truth of the scene. The

subjects were not sensational; the conditions were not exaggerated; the figures were not

16. Allen, 68.

17. Jan Morris, Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (San Diego, New York: Harcourt, 1968), 9.

321
caricatured. Among Weeks' paintings there are no slave markets or executioners. There are

decaying buildings, but the decay never detracts from their architectural grandeur. There are

soldiers, shopkeepers, camel drivers and half-nude women, but they share a rarely conveyed

dignity and agency. Works from every stage of Weeks' career suggest that the artist's sympathies

aligned with his subjects rather than against them.

However, the goal of this study of Edwin Lord Weeks has not been to hold up a single

artist as a counter-narrative to a widely-held art historical point of view. Rather, the task has

been to pry apart the monolithic approach to European Orientalist painters with a more nuanced

and discerning examination of one American artist who spent a lifetime traveling in and painting

scenes of regions that were little known in the West. In lockstep neither with the more advanced

nor the more conservative of his colleagues, politically detached from Anglo-French imperialist

motives, Weeks carved out his own brand of American Orientalist painting. At its height, it

reformulated the Western vision of India on canvases alive with the steady glare of the Indian

sun, the color, pageantry and splendor of Mughal courts and Indian princes, the magnificence of

monumental architecture, the solemnity of common ritual, and the vitality of everyday life.

As a body of work these paintings did more than bring fresh glimpses of distant, exotic

lands to late nineteenth-century American and European audiences. Together with Edwin Lord

Weeks' writings, they helped to expand and redefine the role of the American artist during a

period of rapid, intensifying social change. More importantly, they prompted Gilded Age

Americans to think more critically and deeply about the larger world and their place in it. For a

young nation on a trajectory to global power, and for an older nation at the far side of it, they

were and are paintings worth contemplating.

322
Appendix 1

Rossiter Johnson, John Howard Brown, ed., The Biographical Dictionary, vol. 10 (Boston:
American Biographical Society, 1906).

WEEKS, Edwin Lord, artist, was born in Boston, Mass.; son of Stephen
and Mary (Lord) Weeks, and a descendant of Leonard Weeks, one of a
Royalist colony which left England under the direction of Capt.
John Smith for Jamestown, Va. Weeks and others landed at
Greenland, N.H., in 1639, where he built the brick garrison house
still standing in 1903. Edwin L. Weeks studied art under Gerome
and Bonnat in Paris, where he opened a studio, exhibiting at many
of the Paris salons and receiving honorable mention, 1885, and a
medal in 1889. He was also awarded first-class medals at the
Universal exposition in Paris, 1889, and at Munich and Dresden,
1897; the grand diploma of honor from Berlin and a gold medal from
the Philadelphia Art club, 1891, and a special medal and prize at
the Empire of India exhibition, London, 1896. He was a member of
the Paris advisory committee for the World's Columbian exposition,
1893, and of the permanent committee of direction for the
Exposition of H.S.H., the Princess of Monaco; was made a Chevalier
of the Legion of Honor of France, 1896; an Officer of the order of
St. Michael of Bavaria, 1898; a member of the Paris Society of
American Painters, and corresponding member of the Secession of
Munich. His canvases, many of them depicting scenes in the Orient,
where he traveled extensively, include: The Last Voyage, a
souvenir of the Ganges (1885); Departure for the Hunt, India
(1888), now in the Corcoran gallery, Washington, D.C. ; An Open
Air Restaurant at Lahore (1889); The Pearl Mosque At Agra, and A
Rajah of Jodhpur (1891). the last- named picture purchased by the
Emperor of Germany; The Three Beggars of Cordova, in the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Packing the Caravan; Early
Morning in Persia (1897); Indian Barbers at Saharanpur (1897);
Ispahan (1901), solicited for the Museum of the Luxembourg; The
Porter of Bagdad, purchased by the Cercle Volney of Paris; larger
motive of same (1908), and The Princess of Bengal (1903). He is
also the author of: From the Black Sea Through Persia and India
(1895), and of contributions to magazines.

323
 Bibliography

This bibliography is limited to those sources cited in the text. It does not attempt to include the
many articles, reviews, catalogues, books and online sources that the author consulted as
background materials.

Cited Manuscript Archives: papers of Edwin Lord Weeks and Related Correspondents

Alexander S. Twombly Papers. Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Archives Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel-Ruel & Cie, Paris.

The Art of Edwin Lord Weeks, Art Gallery Exhibition Files, 1941-2004, UA 9/3/1. Milne Special
Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH. [contains copies
of original documents]

Edwin Lord Weeks Papers, [ca. 1885-1976]. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC.

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 Vita of Dana M. Garvey

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Art History, University of Washington, 2013

Master of Arts, Art History, University of Washington, 2005
Bachelor of Arts, Art History, University of Washington, 2000
Juris Doctor, Loyola University (New Orleans), 1986
Bachelor of Business Administration, Management and Finance, Loyola University, 1981

Publications

“Evolution of a Victorian Critic,” in Writing about Art in Britain Before and After 1900, ed.
Peter Trippi and Martina Droth (forthcoming, Ashgate Publishing, 2014).

"William Newman: A Victorian Cartoonist in London and New York," review, Victorian
Periodicals Review 42, 4 (2009).

“Grand Designs: Labor, Empire and the Museum in Victorian Culture,” review, Victorian
Periodicals Review 42, 2 (2009).

“Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel, by Frankie
Morris,” review, Victorian Periodicals Review 41, 2 (2008).

“William Cosmo Monkhouse, Late Victorian Art Critic,” Princeton University Library
Chronicle 69, 1 (2007).

Conference Presentations

“The American Artist as Globalist: Edwin Lord Weeks in India,” Nineteenth Century Studies
Association Annual Conference, “Money/Myths,” 2009.

"Cosmo Monkhouse: A Conservative Reconsidered," 2008 College Art Association Annual

Conference, Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History.

Academic Employment

University of Washington, Teaching Associate, Art History

University of Puget Sound, Instructor, Art History