Springtime, Harlem River

Ernest Lawson’s Springtime, Harlem River pictures the northern reaches of New York City’s Manhattan Island as a rural idyll. Framed on either side by dark foliage, the glassy river is thinly veiled by a row of just-leafing trees that seem to dance across the surface of the image. Two small houses nestle against the hill in the foreground, and more houses can be seen on the far shore below a hill crowned by a red barn. Glimpsed through the trees, the water appears divided by a narrow spit of land, a reminder that the Harlem River, which separates Manhattan from the Bronx to the north, was originally a shallow tidal strait. Lawson’s concern is not with geographical specificity, however, but with a poetic evocation of spring. He used his characteristic thickly textured paint and sparkling highlights for a jewel-like effect; the highly worked forms of hills, trees, and buildings are built up from the surface of the canvas for a tactile and almost animate presence.

Between 1898 and 1905, when Lawson lived in the Washington Heights neighborhood at Manhattan’s northern end, he discovered his most important subject matter, urban waterways. Elevated above the rivers that bound the island on three sides, the neighborhood affords dramatic views of water, bridges, and far shores. Even after Lawson moved to Greenwich Village, near the opposite end of Manhattan, he continued to paint the city’s rivers in such works as the Terra Foundation’s Brooklyn Bridge (TF 1992.43). Springtime, Harlem River, however, bears less affinity with such overtly urban images than with the rural scenes he portrayed in locales as far-flung as New England and Florida. This work may be the artist’s effort to record his old neighborhood’s early character as a quiet region of small farms, an identity that was rapidly vanishing in the years Lawson lived there.

Lawson developed his hallmark technique of thick pigment applied in distinct spots of pure color under the influence of impressionism, the use of broken brushwork and light bright color to capture the scintillating effects of reflected light. Springtime, Harlem River also reveals his affiliation with post-impressionism, with its tactile surfaces and emotional intensity. The patterned effects of the delicate spray of budding foliage across the surface of the work emphasizes the treatment of the entire painting as a flat surface decorated with distinct irregular spots of color, thus evoking springtime’s joyful renewal in both technique and imagery. For conservative American art critics in the 1910s and 1920s, Lawson’s personal brand of impressionism, with its lyricism, decorative, almost sculpted paint surfaces, and often bucolic subjects, represented a “sane” modernism, in contrast to the avant-garde experiments of the more radical artists with whom Lawson often exhibited.

Americans and Paris, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine (organizer). Venue: Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, August 1–October 22, 1980. [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, July 19–September 14, 1985.

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

An American Revelation: The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 28–October 1, 1988.

America the Beautiful: Landscapes from Home, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 16, 2001–January 13, 2002.

American Classics from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 14–June 15, 2003.

American Classics, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 13, 2003–February 8, 2004.

The Eight and American Modernisms, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, and Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (organizers). Venues: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, March 6–May 24, 2009; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 6–August 23, 2009. [exh. cat]

Manifest Destiny, Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Loyola University Museum of Art, May 17–August 10, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Pl. T-154, p. 263 (color).

Marlais, Michael. Americans and Paris. (exh. cat., Colby College Museum of Art). Waterville, Maine: Colby College Museum of Art, 1990. Text pp. 25, 56, 61 (checklist); no. 20, p. 26 (color).

Southgate, M. Therese. "The Cover." The Journal of the American Medical Association 265:15 (April 17, 1991): 1932. Text p. 1932; ill. cover (color).

Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text p. 36 (checklist).

Kennedy, Elizabeth et al. The Eight and American Modernisms. (exh. cat., New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT and Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2009. Text p. 175 (checklist); Ill. p. 86 (color).

Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA III: Covers and Essays from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, Illinois: American Medical Association, 2011. Text p. 30; ill. opposite p. 30 (color).