George Luks was an American painter, illustrator and comics artist, who represented New Realism (American Realism) art movement. Also, he was a renowned founding member of "The Eight" group and a vigorous opponent of academic and conservative standards in subject matter. Moreover, Luks was the owner and founder of George Luks School of Painting.
Background
George Luks was born on August 13, 1867, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States. He was a son of Emil Charles Luks, a physician and apothecary, and Bertha (von Kraemer) Luks, an amateur painter and musician. George also had a sister, Anna, and a brother, Wilhelm.
Education
In his early years, while still a teen, George, together with his brother Wilhelm, played the Pennsylvania and New Jersey vaudeville circuit. He left performing, when he decided to pursue a career of an artist. In 1884, Luks entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The following year, in 1885, he left the Academy and traveled to Europe, where he attended several art schools and studied the Old Masters.
Some time later, George left for Düsseldorf, where he took classes at the Düsseldorf School of Art. After leaving Düsseldorf, he visited London and Paris, where the painter created some of his works.
In the early 1890's, Luks supported himself precariously by all kinds of commercial jobs — by painting signs, circus and band wagons, campaign portraits, houses and floors. Also, at that time, he was employed as a newspaper artist, and was sent by the Bulletin to cover the Spanish-American War in 1895. His illustrations were lively and exciting, but apparently largely imaginary, as was the story, that he had been captured, sentenced to death and deported.
In 1896, the artist arrived in New York City, where he was employed as a newspaper artist by the New York World newspaper the same year, a post he held till 1897. Moreover, George was one of the earliest comic strip artists and continued R. F. Outcault's "The Yellow Kid", created in 1895, when Outcault moved to another paper. For fifteen years, most of his work was in black and white. It was only in 1898, that Luks started painting.
In his lifetime, Luks was fascinated with the characters and environment of the Lower East Side and consciously attempted to portray these with the explicitness and vitality of Hals. Beggars, drunks, actors, street urchins, prizefighters, the whole range of urban activity are presented with sharp observation and gusto. Street scenes and landscapes are much rare subjects.
The rejection of one of Luks's paintings from the 1907 exhibition of the National Academy of Design was one of the causes for the formation and exhibition of "The Eight" group in 1908. Luks's work in this show had a kind of raw strength and even brutality, which offended academic patrons and critics, but brought him into attention. From this time on, his work was increasingly exhibited, received a number of prizes and was acquired by the more daring contemporary collectors.
Luks was a radical only in subject matter, not in style or technique. He was involved in the formation of the 1913 Armory Show, in which he was well represented. However, he was unable to understand or accept the genuinely radical European art, which was shown in America for the first time, and resigned from the society, which had formed the show.
During a period from 1920 till 1924, George Luks taught at the Art Students League of New York. Later, he established George Luks School of Painting and painted alongside his students, which included Norman Raeben, Elsie Driggs and John Alan Maxwell, until his death in 1933.
Spring Morning, Houston and Division Streets, New York
Brooklyn Bridge
Flyweight Champion of Jumel Place
Butts
Girl with Doll
Girl with Pink Ribbon
Hitch Team
Little Lore with Her Hat
Coaltown
Portrait of a Young Girl (Antoinette Kraushaar)
City Scene
Fifth Avenue, New York
Jack and Russell Burke
Havana, Cuba
Old Schoolhouse, Ryders
Roundhouse at High Bridge
Autumn Landscape
Boy with Suspenders
Portrait of a Girl in Black
The Bay, Nova Scotia
Hannaford's Cove
Old Woman
A Clown
Seated Nude
Madison Square
The Wrestlers
Prospect Park
Child with a Toy
Hester Street
Drawing of Eliza Doolittle, a character from George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion"
Main Entrance, Luxembourg Garden, Paris
Bleeker and Carmine Streets
View of Beacon Street from Boston Common
Boy with Blue Cap
Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue
In the corner
Cafe Scene (A Study of a Young Woman)
Boulders on a Riverbank
Hobo Musician
Seated Nude with Bobbed Hair
Man with a Monocle
Portrait of Miss Ruth Breslin
Fisherman, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
House on the Point
Houston Street
Noontime, St. Botolph Street, Boston
Knitting for the Soldiers, High Bridge Park
Lower Ausable Lake, Adirondacks
St. Botolph Street
sketch
Two Polo Players
Study for The Wrestlers
Two Wrestlers
Views
Quotations:
"At sixty a man has passed most of the reefs and whirlpools. Excepting only death, he has no enemies left to meet....That man has awakened to a new youth....Ergo, he is young."
"Art — my slats! Guts! Guts! Life! Life! I can paint with a shoe-string dipped in pitch and lard."
Membership
George Luks was a leading member of the group of artists, known as "The Eight", and part of a movement more broadly referred to as the Aschan School. The group rejected the subjects of the Impressionists and chose to instead focus on depicting scenes from modern life in New York, fascinated by urban street life in particular. While these artists, including Luks, are perhaps most celebrated for their often gritty portrayals of the working class, they also captured the daily lives of the elite.
"The Eight" group
,
United States
1908
Personality
Luks was always a lusty and belligerent person. Moreover, he was a lightweight amateur boxer, who would often take center-stage in the saloons of New York City, boasting the tales of his alleged boxing exploits under the name of "Chicago Whitey". He often initiated a bar fight. Luks was always a heavy drinker, and his friend and one-time roommate William Glackens often had to undress him and haul him to bed after a night of drunken debauchery.
Also, George was proud of being an American artist and at times, he got combative, when the American public would boast European artist over their nation's artists.
Physical Characteristics:
Luks was described as a five-and-a-half foot tall, heavy-set man.
Interests
Artists
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Frans Hals
Connections
Luks was married three times, but his marriages produced no children.
Lusty Luks: The Art, Life and Times of George Benjamin Luks
This is the definitive study of Luks, a leading figure among a group of artists, known as The Eight, who worked in New York in the opening decades of the 20th century to challenge the domination of the National Academy of Design.