Ernest Lawson (American, 1873 to 1939)
In 1890 Lawson began his studies at the Art Students League under John Henry Twachtman. Lawson developed his impressionist style while studying under Twachtman and J. Alden Weir at their school in Cos Cob, Connecticut. He became devoted to landscape painting, and this interest remained unchanged throughout his professional life. In 1893, he traveled to France, where he studied in Paris at the Academie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He shared a studio with the novelist Somerset Maugham, who used him as the basis for the character Frederick Lawson in Of Human Bondage. During his stay in France, Lawson painted at Moret-sur-Loing, near the Fontainbleau forest, where he met Alfred Sisley, who along with Twachtman was the main influence on his work.
Lawson returned to the United States and married Ella Holman in 1894. In 1898, Lawson and his family moved to Washington Heights in Manhattan, and by the turn of the century, his work centered almost exclusively on views of this neighborhood. At the time, the area was not densely settled, and a number of naturally forested areas were intermixed by small farms. In 1904, he won his first award, a silver medal from the St. Louis Universal Exposition. He and his family moved to Greenwich Village in 1906, and once there Lawson met William Glackens.
Through this important and outgoing artist, Lawson became associated with a group of American artists in New York City, including Arthur B. Davies, Maurice Prendergast, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Robert Henri, John Sloan, and George Luks. This group, who called themselves “The Eight”, held a well-publicized exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in February 1908. They were men of widely different tendencies, and five of the eight artists were known best for their gritty urban scenes. However, common opposition to academicism, as well as an interest in the daily lives of the middle and lower classes bound all eight artists and the environment in which they lived.
In 1910, Lawson was a featured artist and an organizer of the exhibition of Independent Artists, which included most of the members of the Eight; it was the first show in American to have no jury or prizes. He served on the Committee of Foreign Exhibitions for the 1913 Armory Show, and he participated in the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition. In 1916, Lawson won a prize from the Corcoran Gallery that allowed him to take his family abroad. He painted in Segovia and Toledo, and the bright Spanish light caused his palette to become lighter. When he returned in 1917, he was elected to full membership in the National Academy.
A committed landscapist, Lawson always began a work out of doors in the en plein air method. He did not create preliminary drawings, but instead painted directly on canvas. His extremely rich and varied palette has been described as having a ‘crushed jewel’ effect. Like the Impressionists, Lawson used intensely contrasting colors and rough impasto textures in his work, and he had a particular interest in the effect of light on the surface of the landscape. After Lawson became associated with the artists of The Eight, his work became progressively less picturesque. Lawson created many winter landscapes during the first two decades of the 20th century, and in them the impasto and brushstrokes take on their own structural significance. AskArt.com.
Information courtesy of Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers, April 2010