India: Nautch dancer at a palace court, by Edwin Lord Weeks, c.1880. (photogravure published by D. Appleton.)

Edwin Lord Weeks (1849 – 1903), American artist and Orientalist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1849. He was a pupil of Léon Bonnat and of Jean-Léon Gérôme, at Paris. He made many voyages to the East, and was distinguished as a painter of oriental scenes.

Weeks' parents were affluent spice and tea merchants from Newton, a suburb of Boston and as such they were able to accept, probably encourage, and certainly finance their son's youthful interest in painting and travelling.

As a young man Edwin Lord Weeks visited the Florida Keys to draw and also travelled to Surinam in South America. His earliest known paintings date from 1867 when Edwin Lord Weeks was eighteen years old. In 1895 he wrote and illustrated a book of travels, From the Black Sea through Persia and India.

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OZYMANDIAS