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Study of a nude Woman by George Luks browse these categories for related items... Directory: Fine Art: Paintings: Oil: N. America: American: Pre 1940: Item # 1124349
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| Artist: George Luks, American (1867 – 1933) Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 18" x 14" Signed: Signed lower left Date: Dated 1931 Description: This painting is a nude study done for one of his art classes that he taught. Luks often demonstrated techniques to his students by doing such quick demonstrations. The painting is faintly inscribed and signed on the reverse with a dedication to his students. The dedication is dated 1931. The painting is also signed in the lower left corner with his full signature. Condition: The painting is in very good condition. There is an area of inpaint about 1” in diameter in the woman’s buttock area. The frame is newer and suits the painting well. Artist Biography: (Courtesy of Spanierman Gellery) A member of The Eight, George Luks created works in vivid bravura manner that captured the spirited energy of the tenement districts of New York and their occupants. As Milton Brown wrote: "In his art and in his character he symbolized the spirit of American dynamism; as aggressive as a tycoon, as brash and boastful as a ‘drummer’. He was a swashbuckler in paint. This was not, of course, the cultured tradition of American life; it was rather the expression of a cruder side of America, an echo of the frontier." 1 Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1867, Luks was the son of a doctor. In 1884 he began to study art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he was a student of Thomas Anshutz. Luks continued his training in Dusseldorf, Paris, and London. Returning to America in 1894, he began a career as a newspaper artist, working for the Philadelphia Press and the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. In addition to illustrations, he created comic strips and caricatures. In the early twentieth century, Luks joined with Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan to form the Eight. Reacting against the genteel subject matter painted by academic and Impressionist gilded age artists, this group sought an art more directly related to everyday experience, and they turned to depicting the vitality and rougher aspects of modern life. Most members of the Eight worked in a realist manner and adopted rich, dark tonalities inspired by the art and techniques of Franz Hals, Rembrandt, and Manet. Because of their dark palettes and preference for the coarser subjects, the Eight became popularly known as the Ashcan School. During the early years of the Eight, Luks continued to work as a newspaper artist, but he gradually developed his painting skills. He specialized in portraits of street urchins, wrestlers, peddlers, and shopkeepers, although he also painted occasional urban scenes of docks and streets. These subjects expressed to him the romance, freedom, and joyfulness that he felt epitomized America. Luks’ particular talent was the capturing of the character of his subjects and the essence of a moment using a succinct artistic vocabulary and a spontaneous technique. Luks exhibited with other members of the Eight for the first time at New York's Macbeth Gallery in 1908. This show challenged the artistic status quo and created a sensation among conservative and official art circles in America. Luks also exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913, where the works of the early twentieth-century realists, which had so recently seemed radical, were overshadowed by the modernism of abstract movements. Luks taught at the Art Students League in the 1910s, and later founded his own school. A solo show of his work was held at the Newark Museum following his death in 1933. Luks's works are found in numerous important private and public collections including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; the Barnes Museum, Merion, Pennsylvania; the Brooklyn Museum; the Chattanooga Art Association, Tennessee; the Cleveland Art Museum; the Delgado Museum, New Orleans; the Detroit Art Institute, Michigan; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Milwaukee Art Institute; the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the New York Public Library; the Phillips Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Provenance: Private collection | ||
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