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The Old Blue-Tiled Mosque, outside Delhi, India

Edwin Lord Weeks

American Art

The American expatriate Edwin Lord Weeks, like many nineteenth-century European artists, was known for his “exotic” North African and Middle Eastern subjects. However, he also undertook paintings based on three extended visits to India (in 1882, 1886, and 1892). In these works, Weeks’s talent for the dynamic transcription of brilliant light and color allowed him to represent foreign subjects in a picturesque way that appealed to Western audiences. Here, he offered the colorful, if weathered, tiled facade of a mosque as a diverting counterpoint to the subject of two armed men in conversation with an old man in a dhoti (a traditional Indian garment).
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
DATES ca. 1885
DIMENSIONS 31 5/16 x 25 1/2 in. (79.6 x 64.8 cm) frame: 44 x 38 1/2 x 3 3/4 in. (111.8 x 97.8 x 9.5 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Unsigned
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 15.300
CREDIT LINE Gift of George D. Pratt
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Edwin Lord Weeks (American, 1849–1903). The Old Blue-Tiled Mosque, outside Delhi, India, ca. 1885. Oil on canvas, 31 5/16 x 25 1/2 in. (79.6 x 64.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of George D. Pratt, 15.300 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 15.300_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 15.300_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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