Edwin Lord Weeks (1849 – November 1903) was an American painter, noted for his Orientalist works.
Life
Weeks in his studio.
Weeks was born in Boston, in 1849. His parents were spice and tea merchants from Newton, 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.
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,[2][3] and in 1897 he published Episodes of Mountaineering[4] (which was preceded by the 1894 article Some Episodes of Mountaineering, by a Casual Amateur).[5]
Weeks exhibited his work in nearly every annual Salon (Paris). He earned a Medal of Honor in 1884, then a Third Class Medal in 1889, followed by a gold medal at the 1889 International Exhibition, and finally the Legion of Honor in 1896.[7]
^Telfair Museum of Art., & McCullough, H. K. (2005). Telfair Museum of Art: Collection highlights. Savannah, Ga: Telfair Museum of Art. p. 102. ISBN0933075049.
