Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/238

FAMOUS PAINTINGS OWNED ON THE WEST COAST. XIV.

E. L. WEEKS'S "STREET IN CAIRO." OWNED BY THE SONS AND DAUGHTER OF THE LATE CHARLES CROCKER.

The painting chosen this month for the Overland's series is by an American artist, though this fact might not appear from the inspection of the picture itself. Mr. Weeks, like many of his artist compatriots, sought the artistic Mecca, Paris, and there imbibed the prevailing style of the French art of his time. This means, almost as a matter of course, that he also traveled in the Orient and that Oriental subjects largely engross his brush. French art, from the middle of this century to the present time, has been prevailingly Oriental. The unartistic modern garments of Europe have driven figure painters afield for their subjects, into the nude, or back into the past, or abroad, where flowing robes and bright color have not been banished. Millet, it is true, found subjects for his brush nearer home, but Millet's aim was not for beauty alone; and even Millet could hardly have gone above the peasant into the bourgeoise and upper classes, and found pictures to paint.

This argument must be qualified by the admission that the genius can find beauty anywhere, but surely the man of talent only is limited as has been said. Edwin Lord Weeks was born in 1849, in Boston. His masters in art were Jean L. Gerome and Leon Bonnat, and soon after he went abroad his canvases began to appear regularly in the Salon. In 1876 he sent "An Arab Story Teller" to the Centennial. His "Moorish Camel Driver" appeared in the Salon of 1878, and the "Departure for the Hunt, India," painted in 1884, is now in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington. At the Salon of 1885 he was given honorable mention for his "Prayer in the Desert."

The local example of his work is a good specimen of it, and shows him an apt pupil of his master, Gerome. Its title I suggests a comparison with Gerome's picture by the same name, and may be pardoned, perhaps, for liking Weeks's work better; it has less of the languorous atmosphere of Oriental ease, though that may be accounted for by supposing that the time of day is different, the present picture being evidently of a morning or evening time, when there is movement and life in the streets.

The picture, at any rate, is better adapted to black and white reproduction than the Sword Dance, the example of Gerome's work given in the December Overland, where the beautiful tone of the original, especially the transparent quality of the beam of sunlight, proved difficult to bring out in printers' ink. But, however the picture may be placed as compared with the work of éGròme or any other artist, it is sure to be given favorable attention, even among the fine collection of paintings that adorns the Crocker mansion.