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Lot Essay
This outstanding figure study of an armored Moghul horseman relates to a series of paintings of historical subjects, evocative of the 17th Century imperial Moghul court, which Edwin Lord Weeks executed between the mid-1880s and the mid-1890s. The present work was directly incorporated into a painting in which this figure appears as a mounted guard escorting a royal prince ascending the steps of a palace.
Indeed, this work is more than an 'oil sketch' in the conventional sense. The figure, so precisely detailed, is depicted astride a horse and rendered faithfully in handsome profile with his golden helmet, the chain mail vest, the magnificent damascened steel shield, down to the fancy boots and stirrups. Yet the work retains Weeks' characteristic balance between academic precision and painterly impression, as the entire figure is played against an abstract, flickering surface of brushwork. A few deft lines represent the profile of the horse's neck and back, while the lower area of russet, suggesting the flank of the horse, and the upper area of ochre, suggesting the plaster walls of the palace beyond, are simply treated as 'memories' of color and form for the artist's later reference in a full-scale painting.
The present work was executed in situ in India, and it is likely that the accoutrements it depicts were borrowed from the museums or archives of one of Weeks' Indian hosts and modeled for him on a contemporary figure.
This painting will be included in the catalogue raisonné being prepared by Dr. Ellen K. Morris. We are grateful to Dr. Morris for preparing this catalogue entry.
(fig. 1) Edwin Lord Weeks, Entering the Mosque, executed circa 1885, Private Collection.
Indeed, this work is more than an 'oil sketch' in the conventional sense. The figure, so precisely detailed, is depicted astride a horse and rendered faithfully in handsome profile with his golden helmet, the chain mail vest, the magnificent damascened steel shield, down to the fancy boots and stirrups. Yet the work retains Weeks' characteristic balance between academic precision and painterly impression, as the entire figure is played against an abstract, flickering surface of brushwork. A few deft lines represent the profile of the horse's neck and back, while the lower area of russet, suggesting the flank of the horse, and the upper area of ochre, suggesting the plaster walls of the palace beyond, are simply treated as 'memories' of color and form for the artist's later reference in a full-scale painting.
The present work was executed in situ in India, and it is likely that the accoutrements it depicts were borrowed from the museums or archives of one of Weeks' Indian hosts and modeled for him on a contemporary figure.
This painting will be included in the catalogue raisonné being prepared by Dr. Ellen K. Morris. We are grateful to Dr. Morris for preparing this catalogue entry.
(fig. 1) Edwin Lord Weeks, Entering the Mosque, executed circa 1885, Private Collection.