Biografie von Edwin Lord WEEKS (1849-1903)

Birth place: Boston, MA

Death place: Paris, France

Addresses: Boston, MA, 1873; Paris, France (1873-on)

Profession: Genre painter, illustrator, photographer, writer

Studied: …cole des Beaux-Arts with Gérôme, 1869; also with Bonn‚t, in Paris

Exhibited: NAD, 1873, 1890; Boston AC, 1873-84; Centennial Expo, Phila., 1876; Paris Salon, 1878, 1880-82, 1884-92, (prize, 1884; and gold medal, Paris Expo, 1889), 1894-99; PAFA Ann., 1882-83, 1892-93, 1899, 1901; Phila. AC, 1891 (gold); Berlin Int. Expo, 1891 (prize); World's Columbian Expo, Chicago, 1893; AIC; London Expo, 1896 (medal); Dresden, 1897 (medal); Munich, 1897 (medal); Pan-Am. Expo, Paris, Buffalo, 1901 (medal). Award: Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, France, 1896; Officer of the Order of St. Michael of Bavaria

Member: SC, 1897; Secession, Munich; Paris SAP; Boston AC.

Work: MMA; PAFA; AIC; Corcoran Gal; Brooklyn Mus.; Cercle Volney, Paris

Comments: An expatriate painter, Weeks was a disciple of GÈrôme who became America"s most prominent painter of North African orientalist genre. After living in Morocco from 1873-80, he established his studio in Paris. He continued to travel extensively in the Middle East, painting (and photographing) in Jerusalem, Damascus and Tangier. His illustrations and accompanying narratives of one of his trips appeared serially in Harper's and Scribner's from 1893-95. He also made an excursion through Turkey, Persia, and India, which resulted in the publication of From the Black Sea through Persia and India (1896). He is also known to have produced some paintings of Native Americans. In 1905, a group of 277 of his paintings was sold at the Am. Art Gal., NYC, for $47,500.

Sources: WW03; P & H Samuels, 516; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 403; 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 439; Falk, Exh. Record Series.