A Royal Procession 1902

Edwin Lord Weeks made this painting, A Royal Procession, with oil on canvas. Look at how he's built up the scene with these creamy, hazy strokes, almost like it’s emerging from a dream. I can imagine Weeks, back in the day, trying to capture not just what he saw, but what it felt like to be there, in the thick of it all. There’s something about the way he renders the elephant, not just as an animal, but as a majestic presence, almost dissolving into the sandy hues of the landscape. The paint looks thin and he's really captured the light, the way the sun bounces off the architecture. You can feel the weight of tradition, the slow, deliberate pace of the procession. Painters, you know, we’re all in conversation with each other, across time and place. Weeks here seems to be speaking to the same questions of light and atmosphere that Turner was after, but with a whole different cultural landscape as his subject. Painting is this embodied expression and is like a constant exchange of ideas.