works for a greater classical severity. He produced some charming studies of adolescence, among them 'Callicles' (R.A. 1879; now in the possession of Lady Pease), suggested by Matthew Arnold's 'Empedocles on Etna,' and 'Daphne' (R.A. 1880). More ambitious, though not more successful, works were 'In the Arena' (R.A. 1878) and 'Cleopatra' (R.A, 1881), the former a spirited representation of a struggle between athlete and panther, while the latter shows the Egyptian queen djdng of the asp's sting. 'The Danaid' (R.A. 1882), a listless figure full of weariness and dejection carrying an urn to the fountain, and 'Old Marjorie' (R.A. 1890), a fine study of an old Scottish woman's head, also had admirers.
In portraiture the Burns memorial at Ayr (R.A. 1893), a replica of which was erected in Melbourne in 1903, was his best-known work. He also executed the Wellington monument in Liverpool, and statues of Joseph Pease for Darlington and James Arthur for Glasgow, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy busts of George Macdonald (1871) and others. All his work showed intellectual effort, but at times it lacked spontaneity and freshness.
Lawson died at Richmond, Surrey, on 23 Sept. 1904. He married on 28 Aug. 1862 Jane, daughter of Matthew Frier of Edinburgh; they had no issue. A portrait in oils of Lawson, by John Pettie, R.A., is in the possession of his nephew, Mr. Matthew F. Lawson, at Seaforth, Bridge of Allan.
[The Times, 24 Sept. 1904; Spielmann's British Sculpture, 1901; art. on Sculpture in Encyc. Brit. 11th edit.; art. by Edmund Gosse in Century Mag., July 1883; Graves's Roy. Acad. Exhibitors.]
LAWSON, Sir WILFRID, second baronet (1829–1906), politician and temperance advocate, born on 4 Sept. 1829 at his father's house, Brayton, near Carlisle, was eldest son in a family of four sons and four daughters of Sir Wilfrid Lawson (1795-1867), by his wife Caroline, daughter of Sir James Graham, first baronet, of Netherby, and sister to Sir James Robert George Graham [q. v.], the Peelite statesman. |The family surname was originally Wybergh. The politician's father was younger son of Thomas Wybergh of Clifton Hall, Westmoreland, whose family was settled there since the fourteenth century. Thomas Wybergh's wife Elizabeth was daughter of John Hartley of Whitehaven, and sister of Anne, wife of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, tenth and last baronet, of Isel Hall, Cockermouth, who died without issue on 14 June 1806; this Sir Wilfrid's property passed by his will to the eldest son of his wife's sister, another Thomas Wybergh, who assumed the surname of Lawson, and dying unmarried on 2 May 1812 was succeeded in his estates by his next brother, Wilfrid Wybergh, who also took the name of Lawson and was made a baronet on 30 Sept. 1831.
Young Lawson was brought up at home. His father, an advanced liberal, was devoted to the causes of temperance, peace, and free trade. He held dissenting opinions, and he chose as tutor for his boys a young man, J. Oswald Jackson, who had just left the dissenting college at Homerton, and was in after years a congregationalist minister. The instruction was desultory, and Lawson declared in after life that he 'had never had any education,' and that Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' was the book which taught him all he knew. He was, however, early initiated into the sports of hunting, shooting, and fishing, and was a capital shot and a hard rider. In 1854 he bought the hounds which had belonged to John Peel [q. v.] of the hunting song, amalgamated them with a small pack which he already possessed, and became master of the Cumberland foxhounds. He took a keen interest in agriculture, woodcraft, and all rural pursuits. He was early made J.P., and was active in the social and public life of the county.
His father, whose political convictions he shared, wished him to enter parliament at the earliest opportunity. On 21 March 1857 Lawson contested in the liberal interest West Cumberland, which had always been represented by two tory members. During the contest Lawson first gave proof of his faculty for public speaking, in which humour and sarcasm played a chief part. But he was at the bottom of the poll, with 1554 votes against 1825 recorded for the second tory. The new parliament was dissolved in 1859, and on 31 May Lawson, standing for Carlisle with his uncle. Sir James Graham, was returned to the House of Commons, in which he sat with few intervals till his death, forty-seven years later. His maiden speech was made with unusual self-possession in 1860, and Lawson early made a reputation as, in his own words, 'a fanatic, a faddist, and an extreme man.' Joining the radical section of his party, which was out of sympathy with the liberal prime minister, Lord Palmerston,
