青年

欧内斯特·劳森出生于1873年哈利法克斯新斯科舍,于1888年来到美国,在堪萨斯城定居。1891年,他去了住在纽约艺术学生联盟和参加课程,学习下约翰Twachtman介绍了他印象主义,中央影响的成长的岁月。后来他继续研究与Twachtman和j·奥尔登堰因为棒子,康涅狄格夏天艺术学校在1890年代。“在某种程度上,”一位艺术史学家所指出的,“劳森是一个艺术群体运动的产品。”劳森在1893年访问法国和研究Academie朱利安与Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant和让·保罗·劳伦斯。他练习练习在法国南部和绘画Moret-sur-Loing,在那里他遇见了英语印象派阿尔弗雷德·西斯利。1894年,劳森两幅画在展出沙龙。劳当年巴黎工作室与共享w·萨默塞特·毛姆,他被认为是劳森用作字符“弗雷德里克·劳森”的灵感在他1915年的小说人类的束缚^[2]回到美国后,他娶了他以前的美术老师,Ella霍尔曼。

成熟

在他1896年回到美国,劳森开始开发自己的审美。他进一步的鼓励罗伯特·亨利。,威廉Glackens,另一个独立的艺术家,他开始把1903左右。劳森搬到华盛顿高地1898年在曼哈顿上,他的工作在接下来的二十年专注于subjects-Fort泰伦公园,哈莱姆河,Spuyten Duyvil,田野,桥梁,停靠的船只,绿树环绕的山和岩石斜坡边缘的城市,从still-unpopulated大都市的一部分。他的作品形成一个“孤独的风景缺乏人的队伍,”但是充满了一种几乎触觉的油漆和一种轻描淡写的彩色光芒。(艺术评论家詹姆斯·吉本斯Huneker劳森的崇拜者,他朋友的技巧称为源自“碎珠宝。面板”)和其他现实主义者一样,他现场工作,随频率的一些有趣的新主题;他寻找风景如画的带他去西班牙,新罕布什尔州,新斯科舍省,堪萨斯州,科罗拉多州,田纳西州,新墨西哥,康涅狄格,佛罗里达。劳森有他在宾夕法尼亚的第一个个展美术学院的1907年,赢得了奥斯卡奖的年度冬季景观的主题,成为他最的话题。第二年,他加入了叛逆的群体,被称为“八”,其成员包括在内罗伯特·亨利。,威廉Glackens,约翰·斯隆,乔治·卢克,埃弗雷特希恩,阿瑟·b·戴维斯和莫里斯普兰德加斯特.

八

在许多方面,欧内斯特·劳森是一个不太可能的反抗。说话温和,亲切,平无奇的人,他没有天分自我推销和小倾角漆粗糙现代城市生活的方方面面,这是一个标志的五个最重要的八个成员。(Glackens亨利·斯隆,陆,希恩都是众所周知的创始成员垃圾桶美国艺术学院)。与亨利·斯隆,陆,教师,他没有虔诚的学生拥护他也没有条件在纽约art-political圈子里,像亚瑟·b·戴维斯。他忠实的球迷的曼哈顿餐馆老板詹姆斯·摩尔(中央人物威廉Glackens著名的画,在Mouquin)拥有一个深受喜爱的劳森的集合但是没有人把他看作是一个激进的。如果有的话,他有更多的共同点与第八组的成员,莫里斯Predergast在他专业稳定的储备和安静。但他担心亨利的声音和他人分享展览系统集团在纽约,一个封闭的系统,导致广泛的媒体报道和有利可图的销售对于那些工作在一个批准的方式,太多的“私人俱乐部”企业,需要振作起来了。八上演了在著名的《麦克白》的展览画廊于1908年在纽约就是这样做的。

八的展览是“成功德丑闻”的组织者希望。如果销售不符合他们的期望,画家却成为媒体关注的中心有一段时间了。保守的口味被冒犯,年轻艺术家聚集在麦克白画廊看到一个惊人的现代具象艺术的范围。演出之后前往芝加哥和波士顿,它引起更多的媒体报道和公众讨论美国艺术应该的方向。劳森和他的朋友在一个重要的文化事件扮演了一个角色,在开始讨论所需的美国艺术风格和主题的多样性。

同时,然而,有可能对一些人怀疑劳森在多大程度上是一个局外人。同年晚些时候,他被任命为助理国家设计学院的成员,并在1917年他成为了一个完整的院士。他展出的一员加拿大艺术俱乐部从1911年到1915年。他受益于普通画廊表示,在他的整个职业生涯中,获得过很多奖项,被同行的高度评价。事实上,威廉•梅里特追认为他是美国最伟大的风景画家,背书,一个健康的威望。^[7]这一切都转化为财富或名声从长远来看,然而。劳森一生有财务问题并在晚年遭受健康状况不佳。

劳森被邀请到三幅画有助于1913年里程碑式的军械库艺术博览会。像许多美国艺术家,他不准备放弃具象艺术的新路径提出了立体主义,野兽派,和未来主义,但他是后印象主义开放学习更多关于(他第一次暴露在欧洲),并在纽约军械库后看到后印象派作品共处的机会大大增加。“熟人与塞尚的绘画(Lawson)确信,印象主义失去了接触形式在其坚持面光,和在他的后期作品中一个明显的试图夺回坚固。尽管他从未完全同化了塞尚的结构性方法,劳森管理引入到他的艺术形式和Aix掌握一些相似之处……他放弃了对各种色彩的处理阴霾和柔和的漂亮继承Twachtman。”

晚年

虽然他的工作是重要的收藏家的追捧在1920年代和1910年代,如约翰·奎因,邓肯•菲利普斯阿尔伯特·c·巴恩斯和费迪南德Howald,一手建立了现代哥伦布艺术博物馆的收藏,劳森不保持高调的在美国艺术世界Precisionism,阿尔弗雷德施蒂格利茨的艺术家圈子(如。约翰•马林,格鲁吉亚奥基夫,查尔斯•德穆斯),和其他冒险运动和个人采取中心舞台。

最终,他离开了纽约。劳森访问佛罗里达时,他和凯瑟琳和罗伊斯·鲍威尔,他的亲密朋友和顾客谁住在那里。他第一次呆在科勒尔盖布尔斯在1931年,他返回通常,永久搬到佛罗里达在1936年。在他的最后几年,他完成了一个邮局壁画简而言之山,新泽西(不再存在),但他主要关注绘画佛罗里达的风景。抑郁和健康状况下降,1939年他淹死在神秘的情况下,显然在迈阿密的海滩上游泳。朋友想知道劳森的死是自杀。

劳森的工作是鲜为人知的今天比他的许多朋友和同事,但是他最好的作品中可以找到许多美国艺术博物馆的收藏。罗伯特•亨利坚称,在景观艺术家,他是“最大的温斯洛·荷马以来我们。”邓肯·菲利普斯称他为“伟大的浪漫主义者。”除了他们的品质做工精良的风景,劳森的作品有一个有趣的二级今天的生活作为一个田园曼哈顿的《暮光之城》的记录。圣约翰神圣的大教堂,劳森的1903幅画的标题,被竖立在森林不远的哥伦比亚大学的校园和El的咆哮。华盛顿高地的春天树叶和峡谷的划艇今天是一个繁荣的多米尼加街区,强劲的城市,挤满了人,建筑,高度的百老汇音乐剧的主题。劳森的画提醒观众的世界,在几十年的空间完全消失了。

Youth

Ernest Lawson was born in 1873 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and arrived in the United States in 1888 and settled in Kansas City. In 1891, he went to live in New York and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League, studying under John Twachtman, who introduced him to Impressionism and was the central influence of his formative years. He later continued to study with Twachtman and with J. Alden Weir at their Cos Cob, Connecticut summer art school in the 1890s. "To some degree," one art historian has noted, "Lawson was a product of the art colony movement."^[1] Lawson visited France in 1893 and studied at the Académie Julian with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. He practiced plein air painting in southern France and at Moret-sur-Loing, where he met the English Impressionist Alfred Sisley. In 1894, Lawson exhibited two paintings in the Salon. Lawson shared a Paris studio that year with W. Somerset Maugham, who is believed to have used Lawson as the inspiration for the character "Frederick Lawson" in his 1915 novel Of Human Bondage Back in the United States, he married his former art teacher, Ella Holman.

Maturity

Upon his return to the United States in 1896, Lawson began developing his own aesthetic. He was further encouraged by Robert Henri, William Glackens, and the other independent artists with whom he began to associate around 1903. Lawson moved to Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in 1898, and his work for the next two decades focused on subjects—Fort Tryon Park, the Harlem River, Spuyten Duyvil, the fields, bridges, docked boats, tree-covered hills, and rocky inclines at the edge of a city on the move—from that still-unpopulated part of the metropolis. His paintings form a "procession of lonely vistas devoid of people,"^[4] but are filled with an almost tactile sense of paint and an understated chromatic brilliance. (Art critic James Gibbons Huneker, a great admirer of Lawson, referred to his friend's skill as originating in a "palette of crushed jewels.") Like other realists, he worked on-site and traveled with some frequency in search of interesting new subjects; his search for the picturesque took him to Spain, New Hampshire, Nova Scotia, Kansas, Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Florida. Lawson had his first solo exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1907 and won a prize in the Academy's Annual for a winter landscape, the theme of which became his single most identifiable subject. The following year, he joined the rebellious group that would become known as "The Eight," whose members includedRobert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, George Luks, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies and Maurice Prendergast.

The Eight

In many ways, Ernest Lawson was an unlikely rebel. A soft-spoken, gracious, and undramatic man, he had no flair for self-promotion and little inclination to paint the rougher aspects of modern city life, which was a hallmark of five of the most significant members of the Eight. (Henri, Glackens, Sloan, Luks, and Shinn were all founding members of what became known as the Ashcan school of American art.) Unlike Henri, Sloan, and Luks, who were teachers as well, he had no worshipful student-following nor was he well-placed in art-political circles in New York, like Arthur B. Davies. He had his devoted fans—the Manhattan restaurateur James Moore (the central figure in William Glackens's famous painting, Chez Mouquin) owned a much-loved collection of Lawsons^[5]—but no one thought of him as a radical in any way. If anything, he had more in common with the eighth member of the group, Maurice Predergast, in his steady reserve and quiet professionalism. But he did share the concerns voiced by Henri and others of the group that the exhibition system in New York, a closed system that led to wider press coverage and lucrative sales for those who worked in an approved manner, was too much a "private club" enterprise and needed shaking up. The exhibition that the Eight staged at the prestigious Macbeth Galleries in New York in 1908 did just that.

The exhibition of The Eight was the "success de scandal" its organizers hoped for. If sales did not quite measure up to their expectations, the painters nonetheless became centers of media attention for some time. Conservative tastes were affronted, and young artists flocked to the Macbeth Galleries to see a startling range of modern representational art. The show later traveled to Chicago and Boston, where it occasioned more press coverage and public discussion of the direction American art should take. Lawson and his friends had played a role in an important cultural event and in initiating debate about a needed diversity of style and subject matter in American art.

At the same time, though, it was possible for some people to wonder to what extent Lawson was an outsider at all. Later that year, he was named an associate member of the National Academy of Design, and he was made a full academician in 1917. He exhibited as a member of the Canadian Art Club from 1911 to 1915. He benefited from regular gallery representation, won many prizes throughout his career, and was highly regarded by his peers. In fact, William Merritt Chase considered him America's greatest landscape painter, an endorsement that carried a healthy cachet with it.^[7] None of this translated into wealth or fame in the long run, however. Lawson had financial problems all his life and suffered from poor health in his later years.

Lawson was invited to contribute three paintings to the landmark Armory Show of 1913. Like many American artists at the time, he was not prepared to abandon representational art for the new paths suggested by Cubism, Fauvism, and Futurism, but he was open to learning more about Post-Impressionism (which he had first been exposed to in Europe), and in New York the opportunities to see the Post-Impressionists increased considerably after the Armory Show. "Acquaintance with Cézanne's painting convinced [Lawson] that Impressionism had lost contact with form in its insistence upon surface light, and in his later works he made an obvious attempt to recapture solidity. Although he never completely assimilated Cézanne's structural methods, Lawson managed to introduce a measure of form into his art and some resemblance to the Aix master...as he dropped the coloristic haze and the pastel prettiness inherited from Twachtman."

Later year

Though his work was sought after by important collectors in the 1910s and 1920s, such as John Quinn, Duncan Phillips, Albert C. Barnes, and Ferdinand Howald, who single-handedly built the modern collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Lawson did not maintain a high profile in the American art world as Precisionism, the artists of the Alfred Stieglitz circle (e.g., Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Charles Demuth), and other adventurous movements and individuals took center stage.^[9]

Eventually, he left New York. Lawson visited Florida when he befriended Katherine and Royce Powell, his close friends and patrons who lived there. He first stayed with them in Coral Gables in 1931, and he returned there often, moving permanently to Florida in 1936. In his last years, he completed a post office mural in Short Hills, New Jersey (no longer extant), but he focused primarily on painting the Florida landscape. Depressed and in declining health, he drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1939, apparently while swimming on Miami Beach. Friends wondered if Lawson's death had been a suicide.^[10]

Lawson's work is little-known today compared to that of many of his friends and associates, but his best paintings can be found in the collections of many American art museums. Robert Henri insisted that, among landscape artists, he was "the biggest we have had since Winslow Homer."^[11] Duncan Phillips referred to him as a "great romanticist."^[12] Aside from their qualities as well-made landscapes, Lawson's works have an interesting secondary life today as a record of the twilight of pastoral Manhattan. The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, in Lawson's 1903 painting of that title, is being erected in the midst of a woodland not far from the campus of Columbia University and the roar of the El. His Washington Heights of springtime foliage and glens and rowboats is today a thriving Dominican neighborhood, robustly urban, packed with people and buildings, subject of the Broadway musical In the Heights. Lawson's paintings remind viewers of a world that vanished entirely in the space of a few decades.