Sale: Page Auctioneers & Appraisers, Batavi♋a, New York, December 11, 1999, 𝔉lot 11

 

Unlined. Under UV: Some spots of inpainting in the foliage and branches. Scattered strokes and dots of inpainting throughout background. Inpainting to figure's face and hands. Heavy varnish around figure's face and arms fluoresces.
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In the Garden is a rare work in Edwin Lord Weeks's expansive oeuvre, and one whose importance cannot be overstated.  Painted in or shortly after a trip to Tangier in 1876, it is among the artist's earliest Orientalist subjects.  The qualities for which Weeks would become renowned are here already, in the gorgeous colors, the animated brushstrokes, and, in some passages, a remarkable intricacy and confidence of line.  Weeks's singular ability to render the flickering effects of sunlight and shadow is evident as well - a hint, perhaps, of his use of photographs in later compositions.  But what is special about this work, and what sets it so distinctly apart, is the subject that it depicts: With its focus on a single young woman in a citrus-scented grove, In the Garden might be Week🀅s's most intimate, most emotive, and even m𒁃ost compelling Orientalist work of all. 

In 1872, Edwin Lord Weeks traveled to Morocco.  He would return regularly to that country, filling his sketchbooks with scenes of its architecture, markets, and peoples.  These studies would form the basis for countless later paintings, created in his studio in Paris.  (A Boston native, Weeks had arrived in Paris in 1874.  There he became a student of Léon Bonnat [1833-1922] and, possibly, a friend of Gérôme [1824-1904]. Weeks maintained a residence in that city until his death in 1903.)   In 1880, Weeks exhibited two Moroccan subjects at the Paris Salon, Camels Embarking on the Shore of Sale and The Gate of the Ancient "Fondak" in the Holy City of Sale; within two weeks of the exhibition, they had sold.  By the middle of that decade, Weeks was exhibiting Moroccan subjects in America, as well, and was finding an equally appreciative audience.  (Indeed, tho🙈ugh today Weeks is best known for his Indian subjects, created in the 1880s and '90s, a catalogue of pictures in American collections compiled at the time of his death reveals that nearly all were early works, with Middle Eastern or North African themes.)

Inscribed, Tangier, the setting of the present work might be the famed Mendoubia Gardens, or possibly the seventeenth-century gardens of the Dar el Makhzen (Sultan's Palace), noted for its citrus trees, pink datura, and jacaranda.  Weeks's lifelong commitment to plein-air sketching is evident in the fluid, painterly style with which he records this site, and his remarkable sensitivity to color is in full display.  (Weeks only reluctantly called himself an "orientalist" painter, feeling it to be too limiting; he preferred instead the term "colorist.")  The woman in this painting, arms raised as she gathers tangerines from the tree, wears traditional Moroccan attire. Though she recalls innumerable images of dancing girls in others' Orientalist oeuvres, and follows a long tradition of garden pictures in the harem genre, there is something more wholesome here.  Light glancing across her form, limbs strong and upright, she dissolves into the foliage around her.  In the Garden is not so much an alluring figure study, we feel, as it is a profoundly personal im♑pression of Tangier – it records the smells, the sun, and the vibrant atmosphere of the place that inspired one artist's career.

This catalogue note was written by Dr. Emily M💙. Weeks.

Please note this work will be sold unframed.