Page 25 - Orient Collection

6. Traders at the Gates of Jerusalem

Artist: Edwin Lord WEEKS, American, (1849 - 1903)
Execution date (approximate): Oct.1872
Téchnique: Watercolor on paper-carton. (With iscription Jerusalem October 1872, lower left)
Measures: 25.8 x 37.2 cm.
Description: A group of Traders are gathered at the outskirts of the Old city of Jerusalem.

Exhibitions
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 reproduced in The Catalogue Raisonné 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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