George Benjamin Luks (American, 1867 to 1933)
George Luks was born in Williamsport Pennsylvania in 1867. After traveling and studying in Europe he returned to the United States in 1894 to work for the “Philadelphia Press,” doing reportorial sketches, a method that became his forte. He enrolled at Pennsylvania Academy, but his rebellious nature resisted the formal study and he withdrew after one month. In Philadelphia, he became friends with John Sloan, Robert Henri, William Glackens and Everett Shinn and by 1896, with that group, he moved to New York City where he joined the staff of the “The New York World” and began to draw the comic strip, “The Yellow Kid.” In 1902 Luks abandoned the comic strip to pursue painting and along with Sloan, Henri, Glackens and Shinn, was know as the Ashcan School.
Along with the other members of the Ashcan School, he exhibited at a highly controversial exhibition called The Eight at the Macbeth Gallery, which was a rebellion against the strictures of the National Academy. He also exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913. His best-known painting is The Wrestlers. Perhaps as famous as his painting was Luk’s personality. He was good natured but loud and boastful and a heavy drinker. He was found dead in the streets of New York in 1933, the result of a bar room brawl.
George Luks, an American painter and draftsman, spent a year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts in the early 1880s before traveling to Europe in 1885. In 1894 he became an artist and reporter for the Philadelphia Press where he met Robert Henri, John Sloan, William J. Glackens, and Everett Shinn. His style was comprised of dark slashing strokes, and his subject matter was typically the social outcasts of New York City. This led his work to be characterized as part of the Ashcan school. He exhibited in the Armory Show of 1913.
Information courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries, November 2008.