George Luks

George Luks painted the energy of New York’s streets and people with a heavy brush and a sense of fun. Children dancing, wrestlers, pushcart markets, old men in doorways: he painted them all in the dark, lively manner of Frans Hals, whom he admired.

Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he studied briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy and then in Düsseldorf and other European cities. He worked as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia and New York, where he drew the Hogan’s Alley comic strip with the Yellow Kid. He was one of The Eight, who exhibited in 1908 against the National Academy of Design, and a central figure of the Ashcan School. His best known paintings include The Wrestlers in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Hester Street in the Brooklyn Museum.

In Allen Street and Bleeker and Carmine Streets, look at the crowded, quickly drawn street life of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village.