1. Ernest Lawson was a Canadian-American painter and exhibited his work at the Canadian Art Club and as a member of the American group The Eight, artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest the narrowness of taste and restrictive exhibition policies of the conservative, powerful National Academy of Design.
Ernest Lawson's painting style is heavily influenced by the art of John Henry Twachtman, J Alden Weir, and Alfred Sisley.
Ernest Lawson was born in 1873 in Halifax, Nova Scotia to a prominent family, and arrived in the United States in 1888 and settled in Kansas City.
Ernest Lawson later continued to study with Twachtman and with J Alden Weir at their Cos Cob, Connecticut summer art school in the 1890s.
Ernest Lawson practiced plein air painting in southern France and at Moret-sur-Loing, where he met the English Impressionist Alfred Sisley.
Ernest Lawson was further encouraged by Robert Henri, William Glackens, and the other independent artists with whom he began to associate around 1903.
Ernest 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.
Ernest Lawson exhibited as a member of the Canadian Art Club from 1911 to 1915.
Ernest Lawson benefited from regular gallery representation, won many prizes throughout his career, and was highly regarded by his peers.
Ernest Lawson had financial problems all his life and suffered from poor health in his later years.
Ernest Lawson was invited to contribute three paintings to the landmark Armory Show of 1913.
Ernest Lawson visited Florida when he befriended Katherine and Royce Powell, his close friends and patrons who lived there.
Ernest Lawson first stayed with them in Coral Gables in 1931, and he returned there often, moving permanently to Florida in 1936.
Ernest 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 North American art museums.
The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, in Ernest 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.
Ernest Lawson's paintings remind viewers of a world that vanished entirely in the space of a few decades.