Left: Strayed – A Moonlight Pastoral, by Cecil Gordon Lawson (1849-1882). 1878. Oil on canvas. 26½ x 23½ inches (67.3 x 59.6 cm). Private collection. Right: Strayed – A Moonlight Pastoral, by John Park after Lawson. Engraving in black ink on paper. 1878. 11 x 9½ inches (27.8 x 23.9 cm) – image size. Collection of the British Museum, registration no. 1879,0510.196. © The Trustees of the British Museum. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
The painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery Summer Exhibition in 1878, no. 23, and at the posthumous exhibition of Lawson's work held at the Grosvenor Gallery Winter Exhibition of 1882-83, either no. 158 or 171. The painting is a nocturnal view of a grassy field set along the Thames with many boats in the river and a myriad of industrial buildings on the opposite bank. A herd of sheep is in the foreground and one lamb has managed to get out of its enclosure and has strayed to a highpoint at the centre of the composition. Two barren young trees frame this particular sheep alone on a ridge. When the painting was initially shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878 only the tree to the left was included so Lawson obviously reworked the painting at some stage.
An engraving of the work by John Park published in the French publication L'Art in 1878 shows only the one tree. Adding the second tree has better emphasised the "strayed" part of the composition's title. A shimmering full moon in a hazy sky is seen in the right middle distance, with its light reflecting off the river.
Strayed – A Moonlight Pastoral was the smallest of the three works Lawson showed at the Grosvenor in 1878. While most reviewer's attention was focused on In the Minister's Garden, a critic for Judy thought that Strayed – A Moonlight Pastoral was the best of his three works there: "At one end of the West Room the centre is occupied by a large landscape by Cecil G. Lawson, who exhibits two other works; all of which show great power and grasp, but the smaller picture, Strayed, is the most true to nature, and far the most perfect of the three" (301).
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum commented on all three of Lawson's submissions extolling their virtues:
While thus on landscapes let us say a word on the three pictures forming so important a part of the Exhibition, Mr. Cecil Lawson's In the Minister's Garden (21), Strayed, a Moonlight Pastoral (23), and In the Valley, a Pastoral (58). These are nearly the first appearance of the artist, and assure him of success. There can be no doubt at the power of painting these exhibit, and as little of the originality of the view of the painter's relation to nature. The richness of the materials at Mr. C Lawson's command also gives him a superiority of immense importance. Of late years our painters have sacrificed every other interest to aerial affects of distance, the wealth of foreground objects has been thrown aside, they have pedantically painted only 'air' and "light." In point of color, too, truth has been lost sight of, with the green earth and the blue sky; yellows of all sorts and faint greys have prevailed. On the other hand, they have given us splendour, leaving the low tone of the French school entirely behind. The French landscape painter is, indeed, beginning to abandon the convex mirror of black glass he consulted for the key of his picture, as a tuner consults his fork, while we, perhaps, will adopt an intense naturalism and solid cold color, such as used to prevail with our neighbours. Mr. C Lawson's pictures require a large amount of light, and they are heavy in effect; but their excellencies outweigh their defects a hundredfold" (642).
L. S. Cook in her review for The Dublin University Magazine considered Lawson's landscapes the most important in the Grosvenor exhibition, especially In the Minister's Garden: "But the finest landscapes in the whole collection are the three by Mr. Cecil Lawson.... The same painter's other works are Strayed: a Moonlight Pastoral, and In the Valley: a Pastoral , both the very poetry of landscape art" (741). The Illustrated London News praised the colour of Lawson's pictures: "There are two 'sensations' in the Grosvenor Gallery. The first is in the exhibits of Mr. Cecil G. Lawson, a very young landscape-painter, to whom the discriminating taste of Sir Coutts Lindsay has awarded excellent places on his walls for the display at three landscapes as beautiful in colour as they are bold in treatment: - In the Minister's Garden (21); Strayed - a Moonlight Pastoral (23), and In the Valley (58)" (411).
Bibliography
Cook, L. S. "Among the Pictures." The Dublin University Magazine XCI (1878): 732-41.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Illustrated London News LXXII (4 May 1878): 410-11.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Morning Post (1 May 1878: 5.
"Pictures." Judy (8 May 1878): 301.
Stephens, Frederic George. "The Grosvenor Gallery." The Athenaeum No. 2638 (18 May 1878): 642.
Created 14 June 2023