Weeks Edwin Lord oil painting framing frames for paintings

Edwin Lord Weeks
American Academic Classical artist
born 1849 - died 1903

Student of: Léon Bonnat (1833-1922)

Along with Bridgman, Edwin Lord Weeks is one of the most celebrated of the American Orientalists, this certainly being so during his lifetime, and although quite a lot is recorded concerning his professional career and travels, much of this from his own extensive travel writings, relatively little is known about his private life.

Weeks' parents were affluent spice and tea merchants from Newton, a suburb of Boston and as such they were able to accept, probably encourage, and certainly finance their son's youthful interest in painting and travelling. As a young man Edwin Lord Weeks visited the Florida Keys to draw and also travelled to Surinam in South America. His earliest known paintings date from 1867 when Edwin Lord Weeks was eighteen years old, although it is not until his Landscape with Blue Heron, dated 1871 and painted in the Everglades, that Edwin Lord Weeks started to exhibit a dexterity of technique and eye for composition - presumably having taken professional tuition.
Aged 21 Edwin Lord Weeks is known to have opened a studio in Newton, in the same year marrying Frances Rollins Hale from New Hampshire. The following year, accompanied by a friend, the illustrator A P Close, Edwin Lord Weeks travelled to Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria as far as Damascus. His sketchbooks from that visit overflow with North African scenes. However, at Beirut, Close died following a fever and was buried there. A painting depicting the port of Tangiers dated 1872 survives from this period and appears to be one of the first of his works in the Orientalist style. During a brief stay in Marocco around this time it is likely that Edwin Lord Weeks encountered the Scottish Royal Academician Robert Gavin (1827-1883) who lived and worked in Tangiers during the 1870's.
After Weeks' return to Newton, Boston journals published their description of his new subject matter and also enthusiastically critiqued an exhibition of his works held at the Boston Art Club - early evidence of his increasing stature as an artist, at least in his home town. The Boston Daily Eving Transcript of 23rd June 1874 announced that Edwin Lord Weeks would soon be embarking for Europe and a season in Paris before returning to the Orient to study the magnificent colours found there.
Having arrived in Paris together with his wife, Weeks first of all attempted to enroll at the atelier of Gérôme in the École des Beaux-Arts. However, while waiting for his application to be accepted, Edwin Lord Weeks started to work in a private atelier, that of Léon Bonnat, a close friend of Gérôme who had also travelled with him in North Africa. Indeed when Edwin Lord Weeks was finally granted admission to Gérome's atelier in September 1874, Edwin Lord Weeks was so satisfied with his studies with Bonnat that Edwin Lord Weeks decided to stay there and not accept the place offered. Although the Boston journals from then on started to call him "a student of Gérome" in fact Edwin Lord Weeks never was and Edwin Lord Weeks always referred to himself as a "student of Bonnat". However it is likely that Edwin Lord Weeks knew Gérôme socially. - Weeks Edwin Lord oil painting framing frames for paintings - Weeks Edwin Lord American oil painting framing –frames for oil paintings and Weeks Edwin Lord’s bio by American oil paintings framing shop of frames for oil paintings Weeks Edwin.
Bonnat himself was only thirty-one years old at the time and an enthusiastic Realist painter. His teaching methods were somewhat radical compared to those of the teachers at the École and Edwin Lord Weeks expected his students to paint as well as to draw, placing less importance in the study of the details of human form and more on the whole body as an idealised subject. Edwin Lord Weeks was also a conscientious teacher and attended the atelier in person more than the regulatory minimum of two mornings per week, even inviting students to his home on Sundays. It is thought that Weeks stayed with him for about a year-and-a-half and Edwin Lord Weeks doubtlessly absorbed the realist style of depicting a subject's characteristics and also the methods of working out of doors (en plein air) to study the effects of natural light and shadow - ideal training for painting ethnic scenes.
The precise details of Weeks' travels over the next few years are not well documented, however Edwin Lord Weeks returned to Cairo in the spring of 1875, the following autum going to Morocco in all likelihood having spent the summer in Paris. Upon his return to America, in February 1877 Edwin Lord Weeks held an exhibition at the Noyes and Blakeslee Gallery in Boston. It was very well received and, according to the Boston journals, the resultant sales were sufficient to finance a voyage of several years to India. But this was not yet to be and Edwin Lord Weeks returned to Paris where Edwin Lord Weeks commenced a work - A Maroccan Camel Driver - destined for the 1878 Salon - his first Salon exhibit. Edwin Lord Weeks then got ready to spend a long winter in Marocco, the details of which were published in Scribener's Magazine in 1901.
Wanting to avoid the northen ports frequented by tourists, Edwin Lord Weeks planned to visit Rabat on the Atlantic coast and so crossed the Straits of Gibraltar accompanied by his wife, landing at Tangiers, where his friend Robert Gavin was living. Edwin Lord Weeks joined them on their journey. It was five days over land and across the flooded rivers (a coaster could have made the journey in a day!) and, not expecting to find a hotel in Rabat, they took with them sufficient supplies for a three month stay. However, reaching Rabat, they found the region to be stricken with famine. Not deterred and, through the ingenuity of their servants from Tangiers and their foreign currency, they embarked upon the tactic of distributing bread to the needy, in return for which they would pose to be sketched and painted - something they might otherwise have been unwilling to do.
They decided to return to Paris in February, intending to arrive in time for the Salon. However a sand barrier prevented them boarding the coastal steamer so they planned to travel overland by camel. But the day of their intended departure both Weeks and his wife succumbed to typhoid fever and Gavin, who was apparently immunised, nursed them until the danger was over. It was not before spring that they boarded a ship carrying the British flag, and even then they were subjected to a violent storm on their return journey.
In spite of the discomfort and dangers of his visit to Rabat, Weeks returned to Morocco less than a year later. Edwin Lord Weeks wanted to visit the legendary towns of the interior and adverse circumstances had hindered his previous plan of travelling from Tangiers to Fez overland. This time Edwin Lord Weeks followed the coast to Mogador where Edwin Lord Weeks obtained the governor's permission to enter the interior of the country escorted by an armed guard as far as Marrakesh. There Edwin Lord Weeks obtained permission from the local potentate to draw in the streets. Edwin Lord Weeks was fascinated by the contrasts between the flourishing commercialism of the bazaars and the ancient monuments in a state of abandon. - Weeks Edwin Lord oil painting framing frames for paintings - Weeks Edwin Lord American oil painting framing –frames for oil paintings and Weeks Edwin Lord’s bio by American oil paintings framing shop of frames for oil paintings Weeks Edwin.
Weeks didn't exhibit again either in America or at the Paris Salon until 1880 and then all his compositions were of Maroccan subjects and the prices asked were those of the best French painters of the time.
In 1883 Edwin Lord Weeks travelled to India and, according to his own letters, spent every day painting and every night developing his photographs, which Edwin Lord Weeks probably used for recording the architectural details and backgrounds for his compositions. Edwin Lord Weeks was to return again in 1892, commissioned by Harper's Magazine, this time accompanied by the journalist Theodore Child who was to write a series of articles on their travels with illustrations by Weeks. Foreseeing a daunting overland journey, they planned to set off from St.Petersburg and to take the Transcaspian railway to Samarkand then descending via Herat to Afghanistan - a comfortable journey for the greater part, becoming more adventurous after Samarkand. However, an outbreak of cholera in the Russian provinces to the north prevented this and, instead, they decided to follow the ancient caravan route from Trebizond on the Black Sea as far as Tabriz and from there across Kurdistan.
They arrived in Trebizond in July 1892 and organised a caravan. They were advised by their guide to buy an araba (a large covered wagon, probably like those used by the pioneers of the American West). So, drawn by four horses, they set off in a south-westerly direction accompanied by two other arabas heading for Persia. However, barely had they set off when their horses became bogged down in a marsh, one almost going under completely. Fortunately the animal was rescued by the team from one of the other wagons.
Rather than camp in the open air they preferred to spend the nights either in khans (modest boarding houses) or in caravanserai, although there was little comfort and, along the roads, one accident followed another as the wagon was repeatedly damaged and the horses injured. They were also hindered by the assiduous attention of the Turkish functionaries checking their papers and passports in every town they arrived at. A week later they arrived at the border with Georgia and crossed the perilous pass of Taya, made even more dangerous since storms had transformed the dirt road into mud . Then ever onwards past Mount Ararat in Turkey, along Lake Urmia and over the border into Kurdistan.

The titles of oil painting old master Edwin Lord Weeks