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Painted by Edwin Lord Weeks (United States) Etched by Gaston Manchon |
| The "Souvenir of the Ganges" is one of the most important results of the painter's indian studies, and in popular appreciation is probably the most valuable. To the clever rendering of a view of the city of Benares from the river is added, for a foreground incident, a boat with three or four figures, and, for human interest, a pathetic touch heightened with the necessary local color. The occupants of the boat are an aged fakir or pilgrim, extended at full length, nearly nude in the blazing sunlight, and dying at the very last stage of his weary journey to the holy city which he may not reach alive, his companion bending anxiously over him, and the rower who rows against the Great Reaper. The spectator's interest, thus adroitly appealed to, comes to supplement his dispassionate appreciation of the artistic merits of the scene, the heavy boat with its bronze-skinned occupants, the smooth, oily water, and the strange and mysterious city piled up in pyramids and terraces on the distant bank, hazy in the heat and spotted with great umbrellas like fungi. Such a "Souvenir" recommends itself to the most unimaginative and the most untrained, as well as to the connoisseur." | |
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Last Updated: March 24, 1999
