- 54
Edwin Lord Weeks
Description
- Edwin Lord Weeks
- Horses at the Ford - Persia
- signed E.L. Weeks (lower right)
- oil on canvas
- 35 3/8 by 61 7/8 in.
- 90 by 157 cm
Provenance
Henry D. G. Rohlfs, Brooklyn (acquired from the above)
Orr's Gallery, San Diego (as The Rug Sellers, according to a label on the reverse)
Acquired from the above, 1972
Exhibited
Literature
Florence N. Levy, ed., American Art Annual 1905-1906, New York, 1905, p. 105.
Condition
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
Catalogue Note
This large, expansive painting shows the artist’s own caravan crossing a stream in the vast Persian desert somewhere between Tabreez and Teheran in the fall of 1892. Although it is based on sketches and possibly photographs executed at the time, the finished work was painted in the artist’s studio around 1894-95 after his return to Paris. Despite some dimensional variance, this is most probably Horses at the Ford—Persia, sold at the artist’s estate sale in 1905. The estate sale catalogue describes it:
“Noonday, and the caravan crosses a stream, where the horses pause to drink, and splash a while in the cool water. All around a wilderness of yellow sand shows they have just traversed a dry and arid country.”
After reaching Kizildize, Persia, Weeks wrote: “We are soon crossing fords where broad sheets of white pebbles frame in the narrow water channels, reflecting the indigo-blue of the zenith.” (Weeks, From the Black Sea, New York, 1895, pp.29–30)
The painting reflects a rugged landscape, which Weeks called a “land of vast horizons,” with Persia’s famous “purple mountains” rising behind the “desert plateau.” The pack-horses, which Weeks termed “weather-beaten,” are burdened with heavy rectangular trunks, wrapped in carpets and bound with ropes. The horses are decorated with embroidered bridles, with tassels and metal bells hanging below the neck on either side. The lead figure on horseback is “Hadji”, Weeks’ head chavadar, or driver, captured with sunburnt face, patchy blue costume and Persian-style white cap and upturned slippers.
Weeks obviously intended this painting, with its finely-rendered, realistically-painted horses and riders, as a souvenir of his most difficult and dangerous expedition. In his early forties at the time, the overland trip was daily fraught with peril from mountains, deserts and bands of “brigands” as Weeks termed them. Cholera and typhoid fever were epidemic, and his American companion died from the latter en route. It is an understatement to say that Weeks was a bold adventurer as well as a gifted painter, and his intrepid travels are memorialized in this fine and rare painting.
This painting will be included in the Weeks catalogue raisonné under preparation by Dr. Ellen K. Morris. We are grateful to Dr. Morris for contributing this catalogue essay on the painting, A Letter of Authentication by Dr. Morris accompanies the painting.