Cecil Gordon Lawson

Inscriptionback to top

Signed in pencil lower right (on back of drawing board): ‘FWL’;
and inscr. in pencil in top right margin: ‘6 p’.
On reverse inscr.: ‘Ia’.

This portraitback to top

The bulk of Cecil Lawson’s small iconography is formed of portraits made by his brother, Francis Wilfrid Lawson, and NPG 2797 is a good example of this older brother’s work. After the death of their father Wilfrid became head of the family, and developed into a successful illustrator (for the Cornhill Magazine 1867–9 and the Graphic 1869–76, among others); later, when he could afford to slow his output, he also showed subject paintings at the Royal Academy (1867–84).[1] According to Edmund Gosse, Wilfrid was Cecil’s first teacher and mentor; he taught him to draw on wood and provided him with the necessary contacts in the magazine and book publishing industry.[2] The controlled strokes and close hatching of this drawing are typical of the illustrator’s technique when producing a design for transmission on to wooden blocks.

NPG 2797 was reproduced in the Magazine of Art, October 1893, p.1, where it was captioned ‘Aged 16’. Lawson’s birth date is given in earlier sources as 1851 but the date of 14 December 1849 was established by Adrian Bury in 1944.[3] This is the basis for dating the portrait c.1865–6.

Wilfrid Lawson’s ‘death-bed wish’ (in 1935) was that his two drawings of Cecil should go to his friend Marion Harry Spielmann; Spielmann decided to redirect the bequest to the National Portrait Gallery, through the deceased’s daughter M. Winifrid Lawson.[4]

NPG 2797 is one of a pair with a portrait of Lawson’s brother Malcolm Leonard Lawson (NPG 2798) by their elder brother. The drawings arrived in a single frame when acquired, and are alike in size and design.

Footnotesback to top

1) ‘Wilfrid Lawson had, perhaps, too much of the painter about him to make a first-rate draughtsman on wood. All his wood-drawings were finished up to get the effect of painting, quite regardless as to whether the engraver would be able to render it’; MA, 1893, p1.
2) ‘[Cecil Lawson’s] father and eldest brother taught him elements of painting and beyond this he taught himself all that he attained.’ Gosse 1883, pp.10–11; and MA, 1893, pp.1–2.
3) Bury 1944, p.120.
4) In the event one of the drawings of C.G. Lawson (pencil, the ‘more interesting one’ according to Winifrid Lawson, letter, 7 Oct. 1935, NPG RP 2797–8) was mislaid, and NPG 2797 and the portrait it shared a frame with, of Malcolm Leonard Lawson (NPG 2798), were given instead. See ‘All known portraits, By other artists, 1880’ and NPG RP 2797–8.

Physical descriptionback to top

Head-and-shoulders, profile to right, holding a porte-crayon in his right hand, with drawing board in lower right corner.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1985.

Provenanceback to top

The artist; given by his daughter, M. Winifrid Lawson, 1935.

Reproductionsback to top

Magazine of Art, October 1893, p.1.

View all known portraits for Cecil Gordon Lawson