George Benjamin Luks (August 13, 1867 – October 29, 1933) was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the late 19th-early 20th century that produced works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods.
...
of American painting.
After travelling and studying in Europe, Luks worked as a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist in Philadelphia, where he became part of a close-knit group, led by
Robert Henri
Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher.
As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
, that set out to defy the genteel values imposed by the influential
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
. His best-known paintings reflect the life of the poor and hard-pressed on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
.
Early life and career
![Luks madison-square](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Luks_madison-square.jpg)
Luks was born in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport is a city in, and the county seat of, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States. It recorded a population of 27,754 at the 2020 Census. It is the principal city of the Williamsport Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a popula ...
, to Central European immigrants. According to the 1880 census, his father was born in
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
and his mother in
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
, Germany. His father was a physician and apothecary and his mother was an amateur painter and musician. The Luks family eventually moved to
Pottsville, Pennsylvania
Pottsville is the county seat of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 13,346 at the 2020 census, and is the principal city of the Pottsville, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies along the west bank of th ...
in east central 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
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
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
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...](_blank)
and
Frans Hals
Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem.
Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...
. Manet's energy and technique also appealed to Luks. Later he went to
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
, where he lived with a distant relative, allegedly a retired lion-tamer, and took classes at the Düsseldorf School of Art. He eventually abandoned Düsseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris. In 1893, he returned to Philadelphia, where he eventually found work as an illustrator for the ''
Philadelphia Press
''The Philadelphia Press'' (or ''The Press'') is a defunct newspaper that was published from August 1, 1857, to October 1, 1920.
The paper was founded by John Weiss Forney. Charles Emory Smith was editor and owned a stake in the paper from 1880 un ...
''.
"Luks's experience as a Press artist-reporter proved seminal to his career, not so much for the work he accomplished as for the lifelong friends he acquired." Working at that newspaper, he met
John Sloan
John French Sloan (August 2, 1871 – September 7, 1951) was an American painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight. He is best known ...
,
William Glackens
William James Glackens (March 13, 1870 – May 22, 1938) was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid-down by the conservative National Academy of De ...
, and
Everett Shinn
Everett Shinn (November 6, 1876 – May 1, 1953) was an American painter and member of the urban realist Ashcan School.
Shinn started as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, demonstrating a rare facility for depicting animated movement, a ...
. These men would gather for weekly meetings, ribaldly social as well as intellectual, at the studio of
Robert Henri
Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher.
As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
, a talented painter several years their senior. Henri encouraged his younger friends to read
Whitman,
Emerson,
Zola Zola may refer to:
People
* Zola (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* Zola (musician) (born 1977), South African entertainer
* Zola (rapper), French rapper
* Émile Zola, a major nineteenth-century French writer
Plac ...
, and
Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
as well as
William Morris Hunt
William Morris Hunt (March 31, 1824September 8, 1879) was an American painter.
Born into the political Hunt family of Vermont, he trained in Paris with the realist Jean-François Millet and studied under him at the Barbizon artists’ colony, bef ...
's ''Talks on Art'' and
George Moore's ''Modern Painting''. Chafing under the limitations of the Genteel Tradition, he wanted them to consider the need for a new style of painting that would speak more to their own time and experience. Henri was a persuasive advocate for the vigorous depiction of ordinary life; he believed American painters needed to shun genteel subjects and academic polish and to learn to paint more rapidly. In Luks, he had a ready listener but also a man who was never going to be comfortable in the role of acolyte.
In 1896, Luks moved to New York City and began work as an artist for
Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer ( ; born Pulitzer József, ; April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American politician and newspaper publisher of the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' and the ''New York World''. He became a leading national figure in ...
's ''
New York World
The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publi ...
'', where one of his assignments was to draw the popular ''
Hogan's Alley'' comic-strip series. Luks began drawing the Yellow Kid after its creator,
Richard F. Outcault
Richard Felton Outcault (; January 14, 1863 – September 25, 1928) was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the series ''The Yellow Kid'' and ''Buster Brown'' and is considered a key pioneer of the modern comic strip.
Life and career
...
, departed the ''World'' for W. R. Hearst's ''New York Journal.'' During his time as an illustrator there, he lived with William Glackens. Along with Everett Shinn and Robert Henri, Glackens encouraged Luks to spend more time on his serious painting. What ensued were several productive years in which Luks painted some of the most vigorous examples of what would be called "Ashcan art."
"The Eight"
The rejection of many of their paintings, including works by Luks, from the exhibitions of the powerful, conservative
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
motivated Henri's followers to form their own short-lived independent exhibiting group. Consisting of Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn,
Arthur B. Davies
Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928.
Biography
Davies was born in Utica, New York, the son of David and Phoeb ...
,
Ernest Lawson
Ernest Lawson (March 22, 1873 – December 18, 1939) was a Canadian-American painter and exhibited his work at the Canadian Art Club and as a member of the American group The Eight, artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest ...
, and
Maurice Prendergast
Maurice Brazil Prendergast (October 10, 1858 – February 1, 1924) was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are ...
, the group exhibited as "The Eight" in January 1908. Their exhibition at the Macbeth Galleries in New York was a significant event in the promotion of twentieth-century American art. Although the styles of "The Eight" differed greatly (Davies, Lawson, and Prendergast were not urban realists), what unified the group was their advocacy of exhibition opportunities free from the jury system as well as their belief in content and painting techniques that were not necessarily sanctioned by the Academy.
[O'Toole, "George Luks: An Artistic Legacy" (1997).] The traveling exhibition organized by John Sloan that followed the New York show brought the paintings to Chicago, Indianapolis, Toledo, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport, and Newark and helped to promote a national debate about the new realism that the Ashcan school represented. Luks' ''Feeding the Pigs'' and ''Mammy Groody'' were seen as examples of this new earthiness many art lovers were not ready to accept.
Ashcan School
Luks painted working-class subjects and scenes of urban life, the hallmarks of Ashcan realism, with great gusto. "Hester Street" (1905), in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, captures Jewish immigrant life through Luks's vigorously painted representation of shoppers, pushcart peddlers, casual strollers, and curious onlookers of the ethnic variety that characterized turn-of-the century New York. Luks's work typifies the real-life scenes painted by the Ashcan School artists. ''Hester Street'' also demonstrates Luks' ability to effectively manipulate crowded compositions and to capture expressions and gestures as well as gritty background details.
''Allen Street'' (1905) and ''Houston Street'' (1917) are equally successful in this sense. The Lower East Side was a rich source of visual material for George Luks.
The Ashcan School successfully challenged academic art institutions, and the authority of the National Academy of Design as a cultural arbiter declined throughout the 1910s. At a time when the realist fiction of Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris was gaining a wider audience and when muckraking journalists were calling attention to slum conditions in American cities, the Ashcan painters played a role in enlarging the nation's sense of what a suitable topic for artistic expression might be. The difference, though, between the realist writers and socially-minded journalists, on the one hand, and the painters, on the other hand, was that the Ashcan artists did not see their work primarily as social or political criticism.
The first known use of the "ash can" terminology in describing the movement was by
Art Young
Arthur Henry Young (January 14, 1866 – December 29, 1943) was an American cartoonist and writer. He is best known for his socialist cartoons, especially those drawn for the left-wing political magazine ''The Masses'' between 1911 and 1917.
B ...
, in 1916, but the term was applied later not only to the Henri circle, but also to such painters as
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realism, American realist painting, painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art ...
(another student of Henri),
Jerome Myers
Jerome Myers (March 20, 1867 – June 19, 1940) was an American artist and writer associated with the Ashcan School, particularly known for his sympathetic depictions of the urban landscape and its people. He was one of the main organizers of the ...
,
Gifford Beal
Gifford Beal (January 24, 1879 – February 5, 1956) was an American painter, watercolorist, printmaker and muralist.
Early life
Born in New York City, Gifford Beal was the youngest son in a family of six surviving children. His oldest brother R ...
,
Glenn Coleman,
Carl Sprinchorn
Carl Sprinchorn (1887–1971) was a Swedish-born American artist who studied under Robert Henri and who adopted a style of realist modernism that admiring critics saw as both abstract and revolutionary. His oil paintings and works on paper sh ...
, and
Mabel Dwight
Mabel Dwight (1875–1955) was an American artist whose lithographs showed scenes of ordinary life with humor and tolerance. Carl Zigrosser, who had studied it carefully, wrote that "Her work is imbued with pity and compassion, a sense of irony, ...
and even to photographers
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis ( ; May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twen ...
and
Lewis Hine
Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and muckraker photographer. His photographs were instrumental in bringing about the passage of the first child labor laws in the United States.
Early life ...
, who portrayed New York's working-class neighborhoods in a sometimes brutally realistic fashion.
In 1905, Luks painted two of his most famous works, icons of the Ashcan school: ''The Spielers'', now in the collection of the
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
History
Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...
, and ''
The Wrestlers'', now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
These two paintings also illustrate radically different aspects of Luks' temperament. In ''The Spielers,'' two young girls dance frenetically, their joyous faces forming an appealing contrast to their grimy hands.
Luks portrays the ability of working-class children to experience pleasure despite their circumstances. Sentimental or otherwise, he painted the truth, as he saw it, as his friend Everett Shinn wrote. ''The Wrestlers,'' on the other hand, is a testament to masculine bravado, a massive, sumptuously painted canvas in which one beefy man has been pinned to the mat by another; the face of the defeated wrestler, turned upside down, stares straight at us. The pose is contorted, every muscle bulges, and the paint reflects the sweat and strain of the match.
Luks was respected as a master of strong color effects. When interviewed on the topic, he said, "I'll tell you the whole secret! Color is simply light and shade. You don't need pink or grey or blue so long as you have volume. Pink and blue change with light or time. Volume endures."
Although Luks is most well known for his depictions of New York City life, he also painted landscapes and portraits and was an accomplished watercolorist. His
visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum reflecte ...
was acute, no matter the genre, the art critic
Sadakichi Hartmann
Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (November 8, 1867 – November 22, 1944) was an American art and photography critic, notable anarchist and poet of German and Japanese descent.
Biography
Hartmann, born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki, to ...
noted. In later years, he painted society portraits (e.g., ''Society Girl''). His style was not uniform throughout his career, though. ''The Cafe Francis'' (1906) contains more impressionist touches than his usual dark scenes of lower-class urban life, and his interest in documentary accuracy varied. ''Sulky Boy'' (1908), for example, depicts the son of a doctor at
Bellevue Hospital
Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States b ...
who treated Luks for alcoholism, but it has been noted that Luks was more concerned with depicting the boy's demeanor than conveying an authentic representation of the surroundings.
Like Henri and Sloan, Luks was also a teacher, first at the Arts Students League on West 57th Street in Manhattan and, later, across the street at a school he established himself, which remained open until the time of his death. One student, the painter
Elsie Driggs
Elsie Driggs (1898 – July 12, 1992 in New York City) was an American Painting, painter known for her contributions to Precisionism, America's one indigenous modern-art movement before Abstract Expressionism, and for her later floral and figurat ...
, remembered him as a charismatic force in the classroom. He enjoyed the adulation of his pupils and was a great raconteur. He was not interested in preaching the tenets of modernism; his commitment was to realism and direct observation.
His work was also part of the
painting event in the
art competition at the
1932 Summer Olympics
The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held duri ...
.
Personality
Luks was a born rebel and one of the most distinctive personalities in American art. "He is Puck. He is Caliban. He is Falstaff," his contemporary, the art critic
James Gibbons Huneker
James Gibbons Huneker (January 31, 1857 – February 9, 1921) was an American art, book, music, and theater critic. A colorful individual and an ambitious writer, he was "an American with a great mission," in the words of his friend, the critic Be ...
, wrote. Like many of the later Abstract Expressionist men, he made a great display of his masculinity and could seldom retreat from a dare. He took pride in being known as the "bad boy" of American art, liked to characterize himself as entirely self-created, and downplayed the influence of Robert Henri, or any contemporary, on his artistic development. He was given to hyperbolic statements and was often intentionally vague about autobiographical details, preferring to maintain an aura of self-mythologizing mystery. He was equally at home at a prize fight or in a tavern as in a museum or a gallery. 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. Although many sources confirm this tendency, they also characterize him as a man with a kind heart who befriended people living on the edge who became subjects for his works of art. Examples of this are numerous: e.g., ''Widow McGee'' (1902) or ''The Old Duchess'' and ''The Rag Picker'' (both of 1905), in which Luks depicted with sensitivity elderly, down-and-out women who knew the harsh realities of the street.
Luks was a paradox: a man of enormous egotism and a great generosity of spirit.
Death
Luks was found dead in a doorway by a policeman in the early morning hours of October 29, 1933, following a barroom brawl. Ira Glackens, the son of William Glackens, wrote about Luks's death that, contrary to the newspaper account stating that the painter had succumbed on his way to paint the dawn sky, he had been beaten to death in an altercation with a customer at a nearby bar. His packed funeral was attended by family, former students, and past and present friends. He was buried in an 18th-century embroidered waistcoat, one of his most valued possessions. Luks was married twice but had no children. He is buried at Fernwood Cemetery in
Royersford, Pennsylvania
Royersford is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States, northwest of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill River.
History
The town drew its name from the location of a Ford ( ...
.
Selected exhibitions
* 1904: National Arts Club (Luks, Glackens, Henri, Sloan, Davies, Prendergast)
* 1908: The Macbeth Galleries exhibition of The Eight
* 1913: The Armory Show (six Luks paintings were included)
* 1937: New York Realists, the Whitney Museum of American Art
* 1943: The Eight, Brooklyn Museum of Art
* 1992: Painters of a New Century: The Eight and American Art, Brooklyn Museum
* 1994: George Luks: The Watercolors Rediscovered, Canton Museum of Art
* 1995: Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, National Museum of American Art
* 1997: Owen Gallery, New York, 1997
* 2000: City Life Around the Eight, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
* 2007: Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895–1925, The New York Historical Society
* 2009: The Eight and American Modernisms, Milwaukee Art Museum
Selected list of artworks
* ''The Butcher Cart'' (1901),
Chicago Art Institute
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and list of largest art museums, largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visit ...
* The Little Milliner (1905),
Toledo Museum of Art
The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...
* ''The Spielers'' (1905),
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
History
Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...
* ''The Wrestlers'' (1905),
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
* ''The Rag Picker'' (1905), private collection
* ''The Old Duchess'' (1905),
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
* ''Hester Street'' (1905),
Brooklyn Museum of Art
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
* ''The Cafe Francis'' (1906),
Butler Institute of American Art
The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum h ...
* ''Woman with Macaws'' (1907),
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the list of largest art museums, largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation a ...
* ''Sulky Boy'' (1908),
Phillips Collection
The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin ...
* ''The Guitar (Portrait of the Artist’s Brother with his Son)'' (1908),
Westmoreland Museum of American Art
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art is an art museum in Greensburg, Pennsylvania devoted to American art, with a particular concentration on the art of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Art lover Mary Marchand Woods bequeathed her entire estate to e ...
* ''The New York River, New York'' (1910), private collection
* ''Nursemaids, High Bridge Park'', private collection
* ''Boy with Baseball'' (1925),
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
Students
His students included
Norman Raeben
Norman Raeben (1901 – 12 December 1978) was an American painter.
Life
He was born in the Russian Empire, the youngest of the six children, four girls and two boys, of Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem. Aleichem's most famous character, Tevye the M ...
,
Elsie Driggs
Elsie Driggs (1898 – July 12, 1992 in New York City) was an American Painting, painter known for her contributions to Precisionism, America's one indigenous modern-art movement before Abstract Expressionism, and for her later floral and figurat ...
, and
John Alan Maxwell
John Alan Maxwell (March 7, 1904 – April 13, 1984) was an American artist known primarily for his book and magazine illustrations, as well as historical paintings. He also was an illustrator for many commercial publications, including ''Col ...
. Luks also taught painting to
Celeste Woss y Gil
Celeste Agustina Woss y Gil (5 May 1891 – 1985) was a Dominican Republic painter, educator, and feminist activist, remembered as one of the most influential Dominican artists from the 20th century. Born in Santo Domingo and daughter to former ...
at the Arts Students League.
References
Sources
*Brown, Milton. ''American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.
*Gambone, Robert L. ''Life on the Press: The Popular Art and Illustrations of George Benjamin Luks.'' Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.
*Glackens, Ira. ''William Glackens and the Ash Can School: The Emergence of Realism in American Art.'' New York: Crown, 1957.
*Hughes, Robert. ''American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America.'' New York: Knopf, 1997.
*Huneker, James Gibbons. ''Bedouins.'' New York: Scribners, 1920.
*
Hunter, Sam. ''Modern American Painting and Sculpture.'' New York: Dell, 1959.
*Kennedy, Elizabeth (ed.) ''The Eight and American Modernisms.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
*Loughery, John. "The Mysterious George Luks." ''Arts Magazine'' (December 1987), pp. 34–35.
*O'Toole, Judith Hansen. "George Luks: An Artistic Legacy." New York City: Owen Gallery (unpaginated catalogue), 1997.
*O'Toole, Judith Hansen. "George Luks: Rogue, Raconteur, and Realist" (pp. 91–108) in Elizabeth Kennedy (ed.). ''The Eight and American Modernisms.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
*O'Toole, Judith Hansen. "George Luks: The Watercolors Rediscovered." Canton, OH: Canton Museum of Art (exhibition catalogue), 1994.
*Perlman, Bennard B. ''Painters of the Ashcan School: The Immortal Eight.'' New York: Dover, 1979.
External links
Examples of Luks’ work 1Examples of Luks' work 4George Luks exhibition catalogs(full pdf) from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Luks, George
1867 births
1933 deaths
American male painters
19th-century American painters
20th-century American painters
Modern painters
Art Students League of New York faculty
Painters from New York City
American illustrators
American comics artists
People from Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Burials at Fernwood Cemetery (Lansdowne, Pennsylvania)
Olympic competitors in art competitions
19th-century American male artists
20th-century American male artists