Strayed, a Moonlight Pastoral, 1878 (oil on canvas)

When this picture was shown at the RA in 1878, the critic of the The Times wrote: '[Lawson] has treated pathetically and poetically a suggestive subject - a lamb that has wandered from its ewe, in a dreary country where the blasted trees and the distant pit-chimneys tell of one of those regions of England in which Mammon has turned Nature out of doors. But even this desolation is made beautiful by the loveliness of moonlight. The contrast between that tender irradiation and the grimy ugliness which daylight would reveal, lends additional poetry and pathos to the picture.'