Edwin Lord Weeks (1849-1903)
Loading the Camels, Salé, Morocco, alternately titled Along the Nile and Loading in the Donkeys, Near East
Signed 'E.L. Weeks' (lower right), identified on a label from The Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York (affixed to the foamcore backing board), dated to c. 1880 in a letter from Edward S. Levin that accompanies the lot
oil on canvas
22 1/4 x 36 in. (56.5 x 91.0 cm)
framed 33 3/4 x 47 5/8 x 3 in.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Sotheby's New York, 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, February 22, 1989, Lot 70, as Along the Nile.
Acquired from the above by the current private Massachusetts collection.

Literature
Exposition des Beaux Arts/Salon de 1880 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880), p. 383 for related work Un embarquement de chameaux sur la plage de Salé, Maroc.
Gerald M. Ackerman, American Orientalists (Courbevoie, Paris: ACR edition, 1994), p. 252, identified as Along the Nile.

N.B.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Edwin Lord Weeks catalogue raisonné from the Ellen K. Morris archives, now in preparation by Edward S. Levin. The painting was reviewed via high-resolution digital images by Mr. Levin, who has provided a Letter of Authentication that accompanies the lot. In his letter, Mr. Levin provides the revised, descriptive title, 'Loading the Camels, Salé, Morocco.' He notes that the painting relates directly to Weeks' important, larger painting Un embarquement de chameaux sur la plage de Salé, Maroc, which, when exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1880, established the artist as a major orientalist painter of recognized talent. Rather than a Nile view, the scene depicts the loading of camels into barges to cross the estuary that separates Rabat, Morocco, from its sister city, Salé.

We would like to thank Edward Levin for his kind assistance cataloging this lot.