Page 118 - Orient Collection

53. The Gate of Bab el-Zuwayla, in Cairo-Egypt

Artist: Edwin Lord WEEKS, American, (1849 - 1903)
Execution date (approximate): 1872
Téchnique: Watercolor on paper-carton.
Measures: 37.2 x 25.8 cm.
Description: One of 3 main entrances to the City of Cairo, which Survived a Thousand years
to the invasions of the Crusades, Mamlouks, Napoleonic Invasion and British occupation.
The Gate here is the Bab el-Zuweyla (Gate of Zuweyla), one of the biggest entryways
into the original walled city of medieval Cairo. Three still exist today. Dating back to the
year 1091. The gate survived the Crusades, the Mameluks, the Napoleonic invasion, the
British occupation, and has thus far survived modernization. Commercial traffic still flows
through the Gate today including donkey-drawn carts.

Exhibition
Royal Academy of Arts in London, in 1878, 1880, Dictionary of Contributors and their work
from its foundation in 1769 to 1904,Vol. VIII, p.196.

Publications
Will be included in the new Catalogue raisonné in preparation of Dr. Ellen K.Morris (PhD).

Biography
Weeks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1849. His parents were affluent spice and tea
merchants from Newton, a suburb of Boston, and as such they were able to finance their son’s
youthful interest in painting and travelling. As a young man Weeks visited the Florida Keys
to draw, and also travelled to Surinam in South America. His earliest known paintings date
from 1867 when he was eighteen years old, although it is not until his Landscape with Blue
Heron, dated 1871 and painted in the Everglades, that Weeks started to exhibit a dexterity of
technique and eye for composition—presumably having taken professional tuition. In 1872
Weeks relocated to Paris, becoming a pupil of Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon Gérôme. After his
studies in Paris, Weeks emerged as one of America’s major painters of Orientalist subjects.
Throughout his adult life he was an inveterate traveler and journeyed to South America (1869),
Egypt and Persia (1870), Morocco (frequently between 1872 and 1878), and India (1882-83).
In 1895 Weeks wrote and illustrated a book of travels, From the Black Sea through Persia and
India, and in 1897 he published Episodes of Mountaineering. Weeks died in Paris in November
1903. He was a member of the Légion d‘Honneur, France, an officer of the Order of St. Michael,
Germany, and a member of the Munich Secession. In 1877 , he had an important exhibition in
Boston, which was a big success, and his sales financed his trips to India. He went to India in
1883 ( to Benares), stayed 2 years, and came back to Paris. He met in Paris his fellow American
Painter F. A. Bridgman (who worked with J. L. Gérome, also Henri Tanner, and became good
friends). He died early in 1903 following a disease contracted during his trip to India. He has
transmitted to us a very true vision of the past in his paintings. His paintings are found in
almost all Museum of the United States of America.

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