Artist Birthdays, August 13: GEORGE BENJAMIN LUKS

 In Artist Birthdays

GEORGE B. LUKS (August 13, 1867 – October 29, 1933)

  • Nationality: American
  • Field: Painting, illustration
  • Art Movement: Ashcan School
  • ARTiFact: A heavy drinker who prided himself as the “bad boy” of American art, he died in the early hours of the morning after a barroom brawl – a policeman found his body slumped in the doorway of a speakeasy.
  • Artist Quote: “In the arts the matter is notorious. There are young geniuses and child prodigies, who are admired like the aardvark and the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, but all the solid and enduring work is done by men who have lived long enough to have mastered their metier and life itself.”
  • Important Artwork (shown below): The Wrestlers (detail), 1905.

George Benjamin Luks. The Wrestlers. 1905.


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