Page 122 - Orient Collection

55. Bathing Gates at Benares

Artist: Edwin Lord WEEKS, American, (1849 - 1903)
Execution date (approximate): 1885
Téchnique: Oil on Canvas, (signed on the stretcher “Bathig Ghats Benares / E.L.Weeks”)
Measures: 51 x 76.5 cm.
Description: The Ganges river at Benares. An extraordinary scene which WEEKS painted
during his travels to India, The Ganges River at Benares, depicting the religious ceremonies
of the lndians in relation with the Ganges River, and which do still exist today.

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.

122 123