LAWSON, Ernst - b. 1873 Halifax, Nova Scotia, d. 1939 Miami Beach

Canadian painter, resident in the US. In 1889-91 he worked as a graphic designer in Mexico. In 1891 he studied at the Art Students League in New York under Twachtman and Weir and attended the summer courses in Cos Cob. In 1893 he moved to Paris and studied in the Académie Julian. His Impressionist leanings were confirmed when he met Sisley and Moret. In 1894 he exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon.

In 1894 Lawson returned to the US and settled on Washington Heights in New York. He painted numerous pictures in fresh, bright colours with motifs of Manhattan and the Harlem River.

In 1908 Lawson became a member of The Eight. In the 1920s he taught at Colorado Springs and Kansas City. In his later years he had poor health and lived in Florida, where he died in 1939.

Though Lawson mostly painted landscapes, he also did some realistic urban scenes which were shown at the 1908 exhibition of The Eight. His painting style is heavily influenced by Impressionism, especially the style of Twachtman, Sisley, and Weir.

Spring Night, Harlem River

In 1908, the artists group Ash Can School (or The Eight) announced new bearings in 20th-century American art. Its members concentrated on the unappealing sides of modern urban life. Maurice Prendergast and Ernst Lawson tried to reconcile this subject-matter with a lyrical use of colour derived from Impressionism. Lawson brought a rough and ready brushwork to his urban scenes, the realism of which was in line with Ash Can precepts. He shared the group’s taste for views of New York from the East, Harlem and the Hudson River he preferred landscape work to painting contemporary city life.

Lawson used white for accentual highlights, and his compositions were generally fundamentally lyrical in tone, like in the present picture. Lawson’s landscapes, which always betray the proximity of the city, derive their power from luminous colour and solid, pastose brushwork.