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Lot Essay
Ernest Lawson's, Cos Cob in Winter, exemplifies the artist's attention to the Impressionist style of representing landscape and nature and the encroachment of modern life on its natural surroundings. In 1890, Lawson enrolled in the Art Students League in New York, where his teachers included John Twachtman, Julian Alden Weir and Willard Metcalf. As a result of his association with Twachtman and Weir, Lawson went to the Cos Cob Summer School in 1892 and 1893. While in Cos Cob, Connecticut, Lawson painted landscapes outdoors for the first time. Although Lawson admired Weir, it appears that Twachtman had a greater influence on the artist. Twachtman more than anyone influenced his attention to the tonal quality of landscape with his almost monochromatic approach to the Connecticut landscape. Like Twachtman, Lawson became known for his winter landscapes, however he did use bright colors rather than Twachtman's gray palette.
The artist studied in Paris from 1893 to 1896, learning from the school of French Impressionist painters who, reacting to the expansion of French industry on the previously untarnished countryside, brought an entirely new form of representation and emotion to painting. His experience in Paris as well as studying with the Cos Cob School refined his approach and made it more uniquely American. As a member of a group of artists known as The Eight, Lawson's paintings conveyed the purity of nature juxtaposed with the realities of modern, and sometimes urban life. Led by Robert Henri, The Eight was comprised of Everett Shinn, John Sloan, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, William Glackens, Arthur Davies, and Lawson. Of The Eight, Lawson was the most taken by landscape and nature painting.
Cos Cob in Winter combines Lawson's richly textured paint application learned from the Cos Cob School, evokes a feeling of an earlier, more pure time, painting it in the poetic and visionary manner learned in his training as an Impressionist while hinting at the unavoidable presence of industry and modernisation on the landscape reflected in the works by The Eight.
The artist studied in Paris from 1893 to 1896, learning from the school of French Impressionist painters who, reacting to the expansion of French industry on the previously untarnished countryside, brought an entirely new form of representation and emotion to painting. His experience in Paris as well as studying with the Cos Cob School refined his approach and made it more uniquely American. As a member of a group of artists known as The Eight, Lawson's paintings conveyed the purity of nature juxtaposed with the realities of modern, and sometimes urban life. Led by Robert Henri, The Eight was comprised of Everett Shinn, John Sloan, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, William Glackens, Arthur Davies, and Lawson. Of The Eight, Lawson was the most taken by landscape and nature painting.
Cos Cob in Winter combines Lawson's richly textured paint application learned from the Cos Cob School, evokes a feeling of an earlier, more pure time, painting it in the poetic and visionary manner learned in his training as an Impressionist while hinting at the unavoidable presence of industry and modernisation on the landscape reflected in the works by The Eight.