In 1891, he went to live in New York and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League, studying under John Twachtman, who introduced him to Impressionism and was the central influence of his formative years.

Lawson moved to Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in 1898, and his work for the next two decades focused on subjects—Fort Tryon Park, the Harlem River, Spuyten Duyvil, the fields, bridges, docked boats, tree-covered hills, and rocky inclines at the edge of a city on the move—from that still-unpopulated part of the metropolis.

The following year, he joined the rebellious group that would become known as "The Eight," whose members included Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, George Luks, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies and Maurice Prendergast.

A soft-spoken, gracious, and undramatic man, he had no flair for self-promotion and little inclination to paint the rougher aspects of modern city life, which was a hallmark of five of the most significant members of the Eight.

He had his devoted fans—the Manhattan restaurateur James Moore (the central figure in William Glackens's famous painting, Chez Mouquin) owned a much-loved collection of Lawsons[6]—but no one thought of him as a radical in any way.

Lawson and his friends had played a role in an important cultural event and in initiating debate about a needed diversity of style and subject matter in American art.

Like many American artists at the time, he was not prepared to abandon representational art for the new paths suggested by Cubism, Fauvism, and Futurism, but he was open to learning more about Post-Impressionism (which he had first been exposed to in Europe), and in New York the opportunities to see the Post-Impressionists increased considerably after the Armory Show.

"Acquaintance with Cézanne's painting convinced [Lawson] that Impressionism had lost contact with form in its insistence upon surface light, and in his later works he made an obvious attempt to recapture solidity.

Although he never completely assimilated Cézanne's structural methods, Lawson managed to introduce a measure of form into his art and some resemblance to the Aix master...as he dropped the coloristic haze and the pastel prettiness inherited from Twachtman.

"[9] Though his work was sought after by important collectors in the 1910s and 1920s, such as John Quinn, Duncan Phillips, Albert C. Barnes, and Ferdinand Howald, who single-handedly built the modern collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Lawson did not maintain a high profile in the American art world as Precisionism, the artists of the Alfred Stieglitz circle (e.g., Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Charles Demuth), and other adventurous movements and individuals took center stage.

The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, in Lawson's 1903 painting of that title, is being erected in the midst of a woodland not far from the campus of Columbia University and the roar of the El.