Winter in New York

Ernest Lawson painted Winter in New York just after the turn of the century, when he and members of The Eight were painting their most avant-garde images of urban America. Like other painters of The Eight and many American Impressionists who had preceded him, Lawson was fascinated by the modern American city and the lives of the people who inhabited it. For Winter in New York the painter has chosen to depict the city at that rare moment when the frenetic urban pace slows after a snowfall. Like Childe Hassam who at this time was painting images of New York in the snow, Lawson has selected a genteel part of the city--a snow-covered street of old New York whose tall brownstones, generous stoops and elegant cast iron railings grace the streetscape. Well-heeled pedestrians make their way along the broad snow-filled sidewalks lined with hansom cabs.

As an early twentieth-century meditation on the urban landscape, Winter in New York recalls Impressionist canvases of New York in wintertime, such as Childe Hassam's Late Afternoon, New York: Winter (The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York). Yet at the same time Winter in New York proclaims its Ashcan heritage with its rich, lustrous impasto and emphasis on the city dwellers' place within the urban milieu. Lawson has developed a nearly monochromatic palette of cool-toned whites, blues and greens. Highlights have been added with touches of warmer-toned reds--seen in the figures and cabs in the middle ground, and pinks seen in the towering skyscraper in the distance. This subtle mixture of colors and bold, muscular painting technique is the hallmark of Lawson's style, which joins the lyrical qualities of American Impressionism with the avant-garde painting of The Eight.