CECIL

See also:

• GORDON
• GORDON, ADAM LINDSAY (1833—1870)
• GORDON, ALEXANDER (c. 1692—c. 1754)
• GORDON, CHARLES GEORGE (1833-'885)
• GORDON, LEON
• GORDON, LORD GEORGE (1751-1793)
• GORDON, PATRICK (1635–1699)
• GORDON, SIR JOHN WATSON (1788—1864)

GORDON

See also:

• CECIL GORDON LAWSON (1851—1882)
• LAWSON, SIR JOHN (d. 1665)
• LAWSON, SIR WILFRID

LAWSON (1851—1882)  , English landscape painter, was the youngest son of William Lawson of Edinburgh, esteemed as a portrait painter . His mother also was known for her flower pieces . He was born near Shrewsbury on the 3rd of December 1851 . Two of his brothers (one of them, Malcolm, a clever musician and song-writer) were trained as artists, and Cecil was from childhood devoted to art with the intensity of a serious nature . Soon after his birth the Lawsons moved to London . Lawson's first works were studies of fruit, flowers, &c., in the manner of W . Hunt; followed by riverside Chelsea subjects . His first exhibit at the Royal Academy (187o) was " Cheyne Walk," and in 1871 he sent two other Chelsea subjects . These gained full recognition from fellow-artists, if not from the public . Among his friends were now numbered Fred Walker, G . J . Pinwell and their associates .

Following them, he made a certain number of drawings for

wood-engraving . Lawson's Chelsea pictures had been painted in somewhat low and sombre tones; in the " Hymn to Spring " of 1872 (rejected by the Academy) he turned to a more joyous play of colour, helped by work in more romantic scenes in North Wales and Ireland . Early in 1874 he made a short tour in Holland, Belgium and Paris; and in the summer he painted his large " Hop Gardens of England." This was much praised at the Academy of 1876 . But Lawson's triumph was with the great luxuriant canvas " The Minister's Garden," exhibited in 1878 at the Grosvenor Gallery, and now in the Manchester Art Gallery . This was followed by several works conceived in a new and tragic mood . His health began to fail, but he worked on . He married in 1899 the daughter of Birnie Philip, and settled at Haslemere . His later subjects are from this neighbourhood (the most famous being " The August Moon," now in the National Gallery of British Art) or from Yorkshire . Towards the end of 1881 he went to the Riviera, returned in the spring, and died at Haslemere on the loth of June 1882 . Lawson may be said to have restored to English landscape the tradition of Gainsborough, Crome and Constable, infused with an imaginative intensity of his own . Among English landscape painters of the latter part of the 19th century his is in many respects the most interesting name . See E .

W .

Gosse, Cecil Lawson, a Memoir (1883); Heseltine Owen, " In Memoriam: Cecil Gordon Lawson," Magazine of Art (1894) . (L .