Entering the Mosque

While the present work was long thought to depict India, Edward Levin has recently suggested that Entering the Mosque actually dates from slightly earlier in Weeks’ oeuvre, and most probably depicts Moorish Spain. Weeks frequently traveled to Morocco from the mid-1870s and lived there intermittently until 1880, when he returned to Paris. Weeks would remain in Paris for the rest of his life, except for his later expeditions to India and Persia. When traveling to the Maghreb during the 1870s, Weeks often passed through Spain as well, enabling him to soak up the warm light and historic Islamic architecture of Andalusia, which proved inspirational to the inveterate traveller and budding Orientalist. Levin believes the present work was painted circa 1880 in the artist’s studio in Paris, but inspired by his time in Spain, and possibly specifically Córdoba which the artist is known to have visited during this period.
Weeks had a strong connection to Spanish art even before turning to the country’s Islamic architecture as inspiration for his Orientalist paintings. Weeks described himself as a student of Léon Bonnat who had been raised and trained in Madrid, and Weeks was much inspired by the colourism of Mariano Fortuny as well. His enthusiasm for painting in Spain and Morocco probably also suggests Fortuny’s impression on the young artist. 1880, the year in which the present work was painted, marked a pivotal moment in the young Weeks’ career. With the exception of an untraced painting which he entered into the Paris Salon of 1878, 1880 represented Weeks' full-fledged debut on the Paris painting scene. The two paintings of Moroccan subjects he exhibited there firmly established Weeks' reputation as a major Orientalist painter, well before his later, well-celebrated Indian work.
The immediacy of Entering the Mosque belies its execution as a Paris studio work. Part of Weeks' great genius was his ability to appear to render a scene en plein air, when it was in fact built up in the studio, at a later date, from sketches, memories and studies made during his travels. The present painting is an exceptional case in point, as a wholly convincing rendition of the exterior of a mosque seen in the bright Spanish sun. The distinctive red and white banded arches above the doors and windows are famously associated with the Mosque-Cathedral in Córdoba, called La Mezquita, and Weeks very likely drew on his firsthand experience visiting the mosque in the creation of the present work. Another work by the artist, depicting a different doorway with a red and white overdoor arch and identified as being painted in Córdoba, was sold at Christie’s, New York in 2004, and a larger work depicting an imagined scene in the interior of the mosque is also in the collection of The Walters Art Museum. While the architecture has been simplified in some places and the bronze doors over-ornamented, the overdoor decoration and even the mismatched decorative window screens on the windows above either side of the door seem directly inspired by La Mezquita. The red in the architecture in the upper register is beautifully balanced against the reds of the saddles and pomegranates in the lower third of the composition, and the work is a brilliant example of Weeks’ remarkable skill as a colourist.
A letter of authentication from Edward S. Levin dated 15 March 2022 accompanies this painting, and the work will be included in his Edwin Lord Weeks catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation.