Lusty Luks

George Benjamin Luks of Manhattan, originally of Williamsport, Pa., was twice in the news last week. In Baltimore, as judge of a Pan-American exhibition of paintings opened with unction by Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson as "an outstanding event in the history of Pan-American cultural relations," he helped to award the $1,000 first prize to Alfredo Guttero of Argentina for a formalized, thick-necked Madonna somewhat reminiscent of the woodcuts of Britain's Eric Gill. The award moved Baltimore Catholics to indignant frenzy. Thundered the Catholic Review:

"It is a repulsive and hideous caricature of the immaculate Mother of God. The Catholic taxpayers of Baltimore . . . must feel indignant that their money has been used to present to the public such an indecent and disgusting picture."

In Manhattan George Benjamin Luks exhibited at the Rehn Galleries 21 carefully chosen pictures of his own, eleven oils, ten water colors. Critics were enthusiastic. Recent subjects ranged from his neighbors in the Berkshires to a self portrait. Wrote Elisabeth Luther Gary of the New York Times:

"It is obvious that he is representative of no temporary fashion in the art of this country, but of its enduring quality, and when he exhibits such canvases as the most recent of those in the present exhibition he is lifting its standard to a new and higher level."

Added the New York World: "George Luks's portraits . . . carry the whiff of the hill country where they were painted." All spoke admiringly that such obvious improvement in power, in sureness, was possible in a painter well past 60.

No other well-meaning compliment would so surely annoy Artist Luks. A beefy, lusty fellow, in excellent health, he realizes as well as any of his critics that he is now doing the best work of his career, takes great delight in defending the accomplishments of middle age over the showy triumphs of youth.

"In all the more difficult callings," says he, "those in which sheer luck and low cunning are of least importance . . . man is just out of school at 60. This is as true in the rarefied upper realms of business as anywhere else. The younger man who manages to attain to some showy second or third rank among financiers and businessmen is so remarkable that the cheer leaders of low literature . . . and the sob sisters move down upon his abode in echelon formation. ... 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."

This generalization is obviously true so far as the enduring work of George Luks is concerned. His artistic apprenticeship has been long and tough. When still in his 'teens he worked with his brothers in the highly specialized profession of safe-painting, decorating the strong boxes of merchants with elegant sunsets, landscapes, floral trophies. He varied this by painting band wagons, houses, campaign posters. Artist Luks still insists that he helped found one soapmaker's fortune by painting his signs on the sides of old-fashioned grocery stores. He saved enough to study painting in Philadelphia, in Paris, Duesseldorf, London.

In 1895, when U. S. papers flared with stories of "Butcher" Weyler, Calixto Garcia, Maximo Gomez, the Philadelphia Bulletin sent Artist Luks to Cuba as war correspondent and illustrator. Because he was not content to gather his news at Havana cafe tables, he was arrested, imprisoned four times. "The spiggoties," says he, "slammed me into the cooler . . . put me away with the rats and the Cubans and deliberated whether to shoot me at dawn or sundown."

He was deported, arrived penniless in New York in the wreck of a cotton suit and a battered straw hat. He got a job as staff illustrator on the New York World, almost immediately received his most valued piece of art criticism in an office message from Managing Editor Arthur Brisbane: TELL LUKS TO CUT OUT THE SMEARY GENIUS.

With his good friends the late great Robert Henri and George Wesley Bellows, George Luks began to develop a distinctive style of American painting which, if cautious, at least was no slavish imitation of the great French modernists. After the War, recognized as an important painter, Artist Luks served for four ' years as instructor in painting at the New York Art Students' League. His salty, Rabe laisian speech caused many a faculty eyebrow to rise. But few teachers have been so beloved, have so successfully inspired the students. From 1920 to 1924 he was to the Art Students' League what Charles Townsend Copeland was to Harvard. William Lyon Phelps to Yale.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.