Ernest Lawson is best known for his impressionist paintings of upper Manhattan, like the Delaware Art Museum's Washington Bridge. Born in Nova Scotia, Lawson studied at the Art Students League and took summer classes at the Cos Cob artists' colony with J. Alden Weir and John Twachtman. He lived in France from 1893 to 1896, where he briefly attended the Académie Julian and became acquainted with the French Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley. Lawson returned to New York in 1898 and began to produce his distinctive impressionist canvasses of the river and the industrializing landscape of Harlem. Stinging from rejection from the National Academy of Design, Lawson joined his friend William Glackens in mounting a protest exhibition in 1908. The show would be held at Macbeth Galleries and its participants would become known as the Eight.
