(American, 1873-1939)

Melting Snow,-Early Spring, New York,, signed lower middle "E. Lawson", oil on Masonite,
20 x 24 in.; fine ornate carved gilt wood and composition frame, 30 x 33-1/2 in.

Provenance: Vose Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts, April 20, 1972 (label verso); to Private Collection, 1972 until the present

Note: For an in-depth discussion of Lawson's work during this period, this scene in particular,  see Boyle, Richard J. 1974. American Impressionism. Boston: New York Graphic Society. p. 224, illus.  Boyle places this work among the artist's best:  "...but when he returned to America to "see what I can do," he found subject matter which suited him. He painted in and around New York City, in Washington Heights for example, and along the Hudson and Harlem rivers. Like Twatchtman, Lawson painted a great many winter scenes, again tackling the problem of white as a color, but unlike Twatchman's, Lawson's style is fairly "rugged." Harlem River and Melting Snow, Early Spring are painted in the style for which he is best known: the paint is applied as a thick impasto of jewel-like color, referred to by critic F.K. Price as a "palette of crushed jewels." Lawson's work is both sensitive and strong, and he was the only member of the Eight to paint pure landscape; but it is, like the painting of Glackens, an extension of impressionist principles. He always did think of himself as a traditionalist, yet his textual and chromatic variations were more personal and post-impressionalist."

Exhibited: American Paintings from Los Angeles Collections, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 1972; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California,  May 7-June 30, 1974, label verso; Ernest Lawson, A Retrospective, 1974; University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, 1979, catalog page 47. illustrated no. 15.

Literature: Boyle, Richard J. 1974. American Impressionism. Boston: New York Graphic Society. p. 224, illus.