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Hindu Merchants
Edwin Lord Weeks (born Boston, MA 1849-died Paris, France 1903)
ca. 1885
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 28 3/8 x 22 7/8 in. (72.2 x 58.0 cm)
- Culture
- Hindus
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Emily Tuckerman
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Edwin Lord Weeks traveled to India in 1883, following many years of travel throughout North Africa. A photographer as well as a painter, he wrote in his letters that he wandered the streets by day and developed his photographs at night. He reveled in the local culture, paying particular attention to the details of dress and customs. He was less interested in royalty than in the everyday lives of people he encountered in the streets. Weeks relied on his photographs to supply the rich details of Indian architecture: elaborately carved cornices and arches filled with polychromed geometric and floral designs speak to the visual sophistication of Indian civilization. The lasting impact of his paintings was to bring alive a culture with which most of his American patrons were unfamiliar.
