ART & ARTISTS: 2012-11-04

Friday, 9 November 2012

Ashcan School - George Luks part 2

George Luks by Robert Henri 1902
oil on canvas 80.9 x 66 cm

George Benjamin Luks (1867-1933) was an American realist artist and illustrator. His vigorously painted genre paintings of urban subjects are examples of the Ashcan School in American art.

For biographical notes on Luks, and for earlier works, see part 1.

This is part 2 of a 4-part post on the works of George Luks:

1912 The Dominican
oil on canvas 142.2 x 124.5 cm

1912-13 Winter - High Bridge Park
oil on canvas 55.9 x 86.4 cm

c1912 Holiday on the Hudson
oil on canvas 97 x 112 cm

1914 Telling Fortunes
oil on canvas 51 x 41 cm

c1914-28 Bleecker Street Kid
oil on canvas 39 x 31 cm

1915 Jack and Russell Burke
oil on canvas

c1915 Bleeker and Carmine Streets
oil on canvas 63.5 x 76.2 cm

c1915 Madison Square
oil on panel 81.3 x 111.8 cm

c1915 The Green Tie
oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5 cm

c1915 Upper Manhattan
oil on canvas 40.6 x 52.1 cm

1916 Brooklyn Bridge
oil on canvas 36.6 x 48.3 cm

1916 Hitch Team
oil on canvas 99.1 x 113.7 cm

c1916 Child with Wagon
oil on canvas 50.8 x 41.9 cm

1917 New Year's Shooter
oil on canvas 77 x 64.5 cm

c1917 Portrait of a Young Girl ( Antoinette Kraushaar )
oil on canvas 152.7 x 101.7 cm

1918 Armistice Night
oil on canvas 94 x 174.6 cm

1918 Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue
oil on canvas 98 x 113 cm

1918 Knitting for the Soldiers, High Bridge Park
oil on canvas 76.7 x 91.8 cm

1918 The Bersaglieri
oil on canvas 102 x 152 cm

1919 Boulders on a Riverbank
watercolour and gouache on paper 38.1 x 48.3 cm

1919 Child with a Toy
oil on canvas 68.6 x 63.5 cm

1919 Dunraven Bog, Nova Scotia
oil on canvas 63.7 x 76.5 cm

1919 Nova Scotia Guides, Lake Rossignol
oil on canvas 64 x 76 cm

1919 Otis Skinner as Col. Philippe Bridau
oil on canvas 132.1 x 111.8 cm

1919 The Brook, Nova Scotia
pencil and watercolour on paper 35.6 x 50.8 cm

1919 The Eddy
watercolour 35.6 x 50.8 cm

1920 Flyweight Champion of Jumel Place
oil on canvas 61.6 x 46.4 cm

1920 Pedro
oil on canvas

c1920-23 Young Boy
oil on canvas 40.6 x 30.5 cm

c1920 Fifth Avenue, New York
oil on board 30.5 x 34.9 cm

c1920 Fishermen
oil on wood 32.4 x 40.6 cm

c1920 Little Girl in a Top Hat
oil on canvas 50.8 x 40.6 cm

c1920 Society Girl
oil on canvas 89.5 x 74.4 cm

c1920 Untitled ( Group of Figures )
carbon pencil on paper 24 x 19.2 cm

c1920s Pennsylvania Coal Town
watercolour and gouache

1921 The Cabby
oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5 cm

c1921 Two Seated Figures
conté crayon on paper 24.1 x 19.1 cm

1922 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
oil on canvas 63.5 x 76.2 cm

1922 Fisherman, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
oil on canvas 40.6 x 50.8 cm

1922 Great Waves ( Coast Of Maine )
oil on wood 61 x 97 cm

1922 Hannaford's Cove
oil on canvas 40.6 x 55.9 cm

1922 Spring Morning, Houston and Division Streets, New York
oil on canvas 40.6 x 50.8 cm

1922 St. Botolph Street
oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5 cm

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Ashcan School – George Luks part 1

Continuing the intermittent theme on the New York "Ashcan School" (see Introduction 4 Oct 2012, William Glackens 6 Oct - 14 Oct 2012, Robert Henri 22 Oct - 1 Nov 2012) the next artist I'm featuring is George Luks.

George Luks by Robert Henri 1904
oil on canvas 194 x 97 cm

George Benjamin Luks (1867-1933) was a pioneer realist, a member of "The Eight," and a vigorous opponent of academic and conservative standards in subject matter. He was born in Williamsport, Pa. in 1867. In about 1884 he entered the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts but soon made his way to Europe, where he remained for several years. His chronology and many details of his life remain obscure because of the extravagant claims he made about exploits which seem to have been wholly fictitious. At Düsseldorf he acquired a taste for sombre colours and became an admirer of Rembrandt and Frans Hals. He abandoned Düsseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris. He then returned to Philadelphia in 1893 where he was an illustrator for the Philadelphia Press where he met John Sloan, William Glackens, and Everett Shinn. They would meet at the studio of Robert Henri, an artist who emphasized the depiction of ordinary life, shunning genteel subjects and painting quickly. The group became known as the “Philadelphia Five.”

He 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, Luks moved to New York and began his art career there as the premier humourist artist for the New York World. During his time as an illustrator there, he lived with William Glackens. Glackens, along with Everett Shinn and Robert Henri, encouraged him to paint seriously, and Luks developed an interest in painting "New York Street Life". The Philadelphia Five eventually became “The Eight.”

The rejection of one of Luks's paintings from the 1907 exhibition of the National Academy of Design motivated Henri's followers to form their own independent exhibiting group. Consisting of Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast, the group exhibited as "The Eight" in January 1908. Their exhibition was one of the most important events in the development of twentieth-century American art. Although the styles of "The Eight" differed immensely, what unified the group was their advocacy of exhibition opportunities free from the jury system, as well as each of their desires to use painting techniques that were not sanctioned by the Academy. "The Eight" expanded into what is now known as the Ashcan School of artists.

Luks made many paintings of working class subjects and scenes of the urban street. "Hester Street" captures the Jewish court through Luks's vigorously painted representation of immigrant shoppers, pushcart peddlers, casual strollers and curious onlookers of the ethnic variety that characterised metropolitan, turn-of-the century New York.

1905 Hester Street
oil on canvas 66.4 x 91.8 cm

In 1905, Luks painted what would become one of his most famous works as well as an Ashcan School icon “The Spielers.”

1905 The Spielers
oil on canvas 91.8 x 66.7 cm

Two young girls make up this painting. Their happy faces contrast with their grimy hands. George Luks successfully portrays lower-class children's ability to enjoy life despite their circumstances. He painted the truth, as he saw it. In regard to colour, Luks said himself when interviewed, "I'll tell you the whole secret! Colour 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." 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.

Luks, always lusty and belligerent, was apparently killed as the result of a tavern fight in October 1933, dying in New York on the streets which he had immortalised on many canvasses.

This is part 1 of a 4-part post on the works of George Luks: