CECIL LAWSON.* Tam is a very gorgeous edition de luxe,
of a very simple, short memoir, by Mr. Edmund Gosse. We confess that we think the matter somewhat slender to have been expanded to the limits of a folio volume, to have been bound in white vellum and gold, to have such gigantic illustrations,—to have, in short, all the sur- roundings of an important treatise.
Before mentioning the way in which the subject of the biography is treated, let us say a few words upon the illustra- tions, which probably formed its chief raison d'être. The first is a large, bold, and singularly coarse etching of Mr. Lawson, by his friend Mr. Herkomer, and has been executed from the latter artist's portrait of the deceased painter. As a likeness, it is, we should say, fairly accurate, but as a work of art, simply detestable; and as for the half-naked female, with her few clothes tumbling off her, and a veil over her face, as if in shame for the state in which she has been drawn, we can only say that she is as unlovely as she is uncalled for, and what on earth her meaning can be in the corner of the plate in which she is etched, above the portrait, we are perfectly at a loss to understand. Mr. Herkomer's ability is, when he chooses to exert it, very considerable, but in the present instance he has certainly done little justice either to himself or his subject; and the same may be said of the other etching which he contributes to this book, a reproduction of Mr. Lawson's picture of "The Hop-gardens of England."
The other etching is from an unfinished picture (also by Mr. Lawson) of "The Swan and the Iris," and is by Mr. Whistler. The subject is very slight, and the etching is slighter, but represents the spirit of the original with sufficient accuracy. The remaining illustrations are chiefly woodcuts from Lawson's earlier work, and there are also two fac- similes, one of a pen-and-ink, the other of a crayon drawing. Let us now consider Mr. Gosse's memoir of the painter.
In some ways this is one of the books which are apt to irritate more than they please. The uniformity of admiration and panegyric which seems to be necessary, in a memoir which is published directly after an artist's death, by a personal friend, is apt to exhaust, even if it does not disgust a reader's powers of admiration. But perhaps in the case of Mr. Lawson, it was
Cecil Lawson : a Memoir. By Edmund Gosse. Published by the Fine-Art Eociety.
well that such a work should be undertaken, and undertaken by one who had known him well. For this artist seems to have been one of those who was known to few, and who habitually concealed from the world his real nature. We doubt even after reading this account of his life, whether Mr. Gosse really under- stood the character of his friend ; for the account he gives,. though evidently sincere, and founded upon intimate acquaint- ance, is a little confused and perplexing.
A few facts, however, stand out plainly from the pleasant. generalities of the writer, and we understand, after reading this account of Mr. Lawson's life and painting, that he was one or those men who probably could never have been generally popular, or generally successful. Art was to him not only a pursuit, but a passion, and he sought in it not so much a. definite expression of any facts of Nature or life, as an embodi- ment of those undefined, perhaps undefinable feelings, which have troubled the minds of poets, and men of a poetic temperament since the world began. It may be doubted whether the life which closed so early (for Mr. Lawson was but thirty when he died) would have produced richer or better fruit, had its way been as smooth as it was stormy. It is at least some confirmation of this view, that the artist's best painting was done in a year of, and under the stress of, comparative failure ; he painted better when the Academy re- jected, than when the Grosvenor Gallery applauded him. There is another cause, though one intimately connected with this one,. which was responsible for much of the shortcomings of his work. He had never received the technical training of a painter, had never learnt what he could do, and what he could not. In all his pictures, we find a confusion between means and end ; they seem to be attempting to cover a greater amount of ground than the artist's powers quite enabled him to manage. They are, with rare exception, rather magnificent attempts than complete successes.
Mr. Gosse tells us a few interesting details of Mr. Lawson's early life. The artist was the fifth son of a little-known portrait-painter, and was born at Wellington in 1851. He began painting when he was four, and at that time copied one of Clarkson Stan- field's pictures in oils ; at six, he began to paint the portrait of a lady who lived next door; and at ten, on being reprimanded by the mistress of a dame-school which he attended, for some childish blunder, astounded her by leaving the school, and re- turning with a canvas bigger than himself, to ask her whether a boy who could paint like that did not deserve to have more- respect shown to him P Mr. Gosse tells us, too, of his admiration and friendship for Fred. Walker and George Pinwell, and of the many studies of fruit and flower which he executed while quite a lad. He seemed to have sold these to the dealers at a very early age ; " at four- teen he was a professional painter." The remainder of his life is a record of comparative failure, interrupted by two bursts of popularity. The first of these occurred in the summer of 1871, when he exhibited the " Summer Evening in Cheyne Walk " and " The River in Rain," two pictures which expressed with almost equal power the pleasant and the dreary aide of our great national river. Again, in 1878, after having for several years had his large pictures rejected or skied at the Royal Academy, he rose at once into universal popularity at the exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, where two of the largest and, on the whole,. best of his paintings were exhibited in places of honour.
The subsequent history of his life, is that of a man who was. not made for success, and whom success, to some extent, un- nerved and distracted. He cannot be said to have then begun. to do unequal work, for his painting had always been of a fitful and uncertain quality ; but he certainly did then begin to play tricks with his powers, and to rely upon his inner consciousness for the materials of his art. Though this latter period was one of decadence with the man, for the artist it was perhaps one of exaltation. For there had commonly been lacking from his earlier and completer paintings, the emotional power whieh appeared in such intensity in some of the dark landscapes of this later period ; it is true that they surrendered many qualities of colour and defined form, but they gained in power and con- centration of meaning, to a more than compensating extent.. The strange part of the matter is, that when he was going up-hill, the painter felt little and did much; and when he was going down-hill, he felt much and did little. This is not the place nor the time to attempt any adequate de- scription of his genius ; indeed, we have perhaps even now said too much to be in keeping with the feeling of bereavement,
which those who knew him have recently experienced. But it may be said in conclusion, that whatever were the defects of his art, they were those of a peculiarly generous and noble cha- racter, and arose from a genius which, like the English nation, never knew when it was beaten," and which only regarded success as a stepping-stone to higher achievements. Of such temper as Mr. Lawson's are the men who do yeoman's service to Art, and who, by their failures as well as by their successes, help to swell the stream of noble feeling and thought which keep alive the beauty of the world.
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