George Luks. George Benjamin Luks was an American realist artist, painter, comics artist and illustrator.
His vigorously painted genre paintings of urban subjects are examples of the Ashcan School of American art. Luks was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to Central European immigrants.
His father was a physician/apothecary and his mother was an amateur painter and musician. The Luks family eventually moved to Pottsville, in southern Pennsylvania, near the coal fields.
In this setting, he learned at a young age about poverty and compassion as he observed his parents helping the coal miners' families. Luks began his working life in vaudeville.
He and his younger brother played the Pennsylvania and New Jersey vaudeville circuit in the early 1880s while still in their teens. He left performing when he decided to pursue a career as an artist. Luks knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist and studied briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before he traveled to Europe, where he attended several art schools and studied the Old Masters. Manet's energy and technique also appealed to Luks. Later he went to Dusseldorf, where he lived with a distant relative, allegedly a retired lion-tamer, and took classes at the Dusseldorf School of Art. He eventually abandoned Dusseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris. In 1893, he returned to Philadelphia, where he
His vigorously painted genre paintings of urban subjects are examples of the Ashcan School of American art. Luks was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to Central European immigrants.
His father was a physician/apothecary and his mother was an amateur painter and musician. The Luks family eventually moved to Pottsville, in southern Pennsylvania, near the coal fields.
In this setting, he learned at a young age about poverty and compassion as he observed his parents helping the coal miners' families. Luks began his working life in vaudeville.
He and his younger brother played the Pennsylvania and New Jersey vaudeville circuit in the early 1880s while still in their teens. He left performing when he decided to pursue a career as an artist. Luks knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist and studied briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before he traveled to Europe, where he attended several art schools and studied the Old Masters. Manet's energy and technique also appealed to Luks. Later he went to Dusseldorf, where he lived with a distant relative, allegedly a retired lion-tamer, and took classes at the Dusseldorf School of Art. He eventually abandoned Dusseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris. In 1893, he returned to Philadelphia, where he
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