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With an oeuvre of meticulously detailed paintings of subjects from across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, Edwin Lord Weeks is among one of the more celebrated American Orientalist painters of the late 19th century. Born to affluent spice and tea merchants in Boston, Weeks took to travelling and painting at a young age and is believed to have made sketching trips to Florida and Surinam in South America when he was barely twenty... With an oeuvre of meticulously detailed paintings of subjects from across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, Edwin Lord Weeks is among one of the more celebrated American Orientalist painters of the late 19th century. Born to affluent spice and tea merchants in Boston, Weeks took to travelling and painting at a young age and is believed to have made sketching trips to Florida and Surinam in South America when he was barely twenty years old. His earliest known paintings are watercolours dating to 1867.

In the early 1870s, Weeks travelled to parts of the Middle East and Northern Africa, carrying with him elaborate sketchbooks that he would fill with highly detailed renderings of the architecture, costumes and everyday scenes that he encountered. Weeks had long been drawn to the East, and sought to travel and paint more of the Middle East and South Asia. Orientalism had already swept through the European arts scene by this time, following Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt and Syria at the turn of the century, and Weeks found himself in Paris by 1874, attempting to enroll at the atelier of Jean-Leon Gérôme in the École des Beaux-Arts. While waiting for his application to be accepted, Weeks started working and studying under Léon Bonnat.

Bonnat had received his artistic training from Madrid, and drew inspiration from Spanish giants such as Diego Velázquez. He inspired Weeks to appreciate colour and to focus on absolute realism while painting. Weeks is believed to have stayed with Bonnat for about a year and a half, in spite of having his application to study under Gérôme succeed in the meantime. Weeks is also believed to have adopted the method of painting outdoors (en plein air) in order to study the effects of natural light and shadow, under Bonnat's tutelage.

Over the following years, Weeks made several other trips to North Africa and the Middle East, including a trip to Morocco in 1878 along with his wife, and a friend, the Scottish artist Robert Gavin, following which he exhibited some of his works on his Moroccan subjects at the Paris Salon to great acclaim.

Weeks also made three extended visits to India in 1882, 1886, and 1892, which went on to form the basis of his rich body of work on South Asia. He was enthralled by the architecture, history, and everyday culture he encountered in cities across the subcontinent, from Lahore to Fatehpur Sikri, Jodhpur, Varanasi, and Ahmedabad. He photographed and made copious notes and studies throughout his travels, using these later as the basis for his paintings.

His third expedition to the country, for which he left in the fall of 1892, was particularly noteworthy for involving a highly demanding overland route from Turkey through Persia, first on camelback and then on horseback, until he reached a port on the Persian Gulf from where he departed for Karachi via the ports of Aden and Muscat before finally arriving in Mumbai (then Bombay).

These travels formed the basis of his account From the Black Sea Through Persia and India, published in serial format for Harper's Bazaar magazine two years later. In these, he wrote of the circumstances that led him to take on such a tedious journey, "this journey was undertaken at such an unfortunate moment, and that there was some underlying method in its apparent madness. When the route was first mapped out, it was our intention to follow the line of the TransCaspian Railway to Samarcand, and thence to Herat, and through Afghanistan to India." (Edwin Lord Weeks, From the Black Sea Through Persia and India, New York: Harpers & Brothers Publishers, 1896, p. vii) Complete with original illustrations, these accounts serve as the primary source for understanding Weeks' reflections on the architecture, people, and everyday scenes that he encountered in South Asia and of the encounters that informed his body of paintings.

Ahmedabad was a prominent destination in Weeks' travels in India. He was enthralled by the city's historic architecture, including its many 15th and 16th century monuments with their elaborate wooden and sandstone decorations. "One is usually more or less prepared for what awaits him at Delhi and Agra, but when we were advised to stop on the way north and see Ahmedabad for the first time, we did not expect to have the satisfaction of discovering for ourselves, as it were, a new type of city, and of becoming accustomed to a new phase of Indian art. The guidebooks and other works which we had studied before leaving Europe made but little mention of this city, and we knew next to nothing of the marvels of wood-carving with which its streets are lined, and its ornate little mosques all built alike of orange-hued sandstone, differing only in their degree of elaboration." (Weeks, p. 329)

Well-read and knowledgeable, Weeks could identify and appreciate the mix of architectural influences displayed by the monuments with ease. Regarding the many mosques he encountered, he wrote, "the most striking feature of these mosques is their curious blending of modern and Hindoo art, or, more explicitly speaking, the way in which the plans of Moslem builders have been wrought out and embellished by artisans of Hindoo or Jaina race. In this case the marriage of these two elements has been a happy one, for the architectural results are often remarkable for elegance of form and sculptured detail, and resemble nothing else in the world." (Weeks, p. 329)

Weeks spent a considerable amount of time in the city during his first visit in 1882. It was during that time that he encountered the American painter and designer Lockwood de Forest, an ardent promoter of South Asian art and craft. De Forest had, by then, established a wood carving company which engaged local workers and artisans on furniture pieces and accessories such as chimneys, sideboards and panels for an American client base. Weeks appreciated de Forests' efforts remarking that "at that time Anglo-Indian art had scarcely awakened to the fact that these things were even worthy of consideration even from an artistic or a commercial point of view." (Weeks, p. 330)

During his time in Ahmedabad, Weeks painted several oil studies in colour and grisaille, and took several photographs of locals, animals, street scenes and buildings. A number of these formed the basis for the present work, which is believed to have been executed in the artist's studio in Paris around 1885?86.

Weeks often incorporated numerous architectural, animal, and figure studies into a single larger painting. In fact, some of his favourite studies have also been found to recur in more than one finished painting. The bullock gharry depicted in the present lot is based on a study of a gharry created by Weeks in 1882, titled Native Gharry, or Cart. The same gharry is believed to have been used by Weeks in at least three other major paintings of wedding processions.

Depicting a Hindu bridal procession, A Wedding Procession captures some of the highly intricate architectural details that Weeks adored in the city. Framing the wedding procession on both sides are the facades of houses featuring exquisitely carved wood and sandstone work. Looming above them is an archway of similar architectural quality. Weeks had written about these historic Ahmedabad houses in his accounts. "The leading features may be again noted as being the deeply recessed lower story forming a veranda, and the wooden pillars with elaborately wrought consols supporting the upper stories or balconies; the whole facade is often covered with a wealth of carving, painted with tints which are rather gaudy when new, but which are exquisitely beautiful when half effaced and weather-worn. The heads of elephants and spirited horses, figures of dancing girls, nymphs, and the gods of the Hindoo pantheon are mingled with floral scroll-work, or more conventional arabesques. The doors of these houses, although massive and heavy, both in appearance and in actual weight, are often exceedingly interesting and of great artistic beauty." (Weeks, p. 330)

A Wedding Procession is a monumental work that has not been seen in public for over 40 years despite being known and reproduced in various publications. It is also demonstrative of Weeks' interests in the contrasts created by daylight and shadows, as well as his calculated use of colours - as seen in the vivid reds and golds of the gharry as well as that of the attire worn by some of the wedding guests and the pristine white of the bullocks who are adorned with silver ornaments.

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