Pals

Artist George Luks (American, 1867 - 1933)

Dateca. 1907

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
Frame Dimension: 36 3/4 × 31 7/8 × 2 9/16 in. (93.3 × 81 × 6.5 cm)

ClassificationsOil Painting

Credit LineHarriet Russell Stanley Fund

Terms

Object number1943.11

DescriptionLuks's painting "Man with Dyed Mustachios" (whereabouts unknown) was rejected by the National Academy of Design in 1907, prompting Robert Henri, who was on the jury, to remove his own entries. In defiance of the stranglehold the Academy had on an artist's ability to exhibit, Luks and seven other artists (The Eight) mounted an exhibition the following year at Macbeth Gallery in New York. Luks was one of the few to sell a piece: "Woman with Goose" (1907; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) was purchased by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. The painting is one of many in which Luks combined portraits of street characters holding or playing with animals, as he did in "Pals". Often the human subject is an old woman dressed in rags and homely to all but the artist's eye. Luks's best-known portraits of beggar women and fortune-tellers date from the first decade of the century, though he remained interested in the subject throughout his life; his last painting, left unfinished in his studio at the time of his death, was a portrait of an old fortune teller with an owl perched on her knee. (1)
Another painting that Luks showed in the Macbeth exhibition was "Woman with Macaws" (1907; Detroit Institute of Arts), which includes the same sitter as "Pals". The macaw features in an undated cartoon published in reaction to an exhibition by the Society of American Fakirs, which shows Luks painting a portrait of a pig with the bird perched on his shoulder. (2) Apparently, his paintings with macaws caused enough of a stir to be satirized in this anonymous cartoon.
"Pals", painted about the same time as "Woman with Macaws", shows an old woman dressed in black, laughing joyfully while stroking the brightly colored plumage of a macaw. The contrast between the two, the one who has lost her beauty, the other resplendent in red, green, and blue, is overshadowed by their camaraderie. Luks's facile yet brusque technique is evident in the roughly worked out features of the old woman; the red slash of her mouth and blue veins of her hand are evoked without extraneous detail or flourish.
Like Hals, Luks painted his humble subjects with compassion and pathos, imbuing them with dignity. He encountered them in his tireless walks around the city's working-class neighborhoods seeking subjects for his works. As one critic noted, "It is not a life without vulgarity, it may be, but it is the vulgarity of ordinary mankind . . . sane and beautiful for all those who can see beauty in what is generally classified as ugliness." (3)
Luks frequently associated women with birds, calling his portrait of Alice Nichols, a young attractive woman with a plumed hat, "The White Macaw" (1921; whereabouts unknown), and dubbing his portrait of the sculptor and painter Margaret Sargent "The White Blackbird" (1919; private collection). Unfortunately, the sitter in "Pals" cannot be identified.
JHO

Bibliography:
John Spargo, "George Luks: An American Painter of Great Originality and Force, Whose Art Relates to All the Experiences and Interests of Life," "Craftsman" 12 (September 1907): 599-607; "George Luks, 1866-1933: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings Dating from 1889 to 1931", exhib. cat. (Utica, N.Y.: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 1973); Stanley L. Cuba, Nina Kasanof, and Judith O'Toole, "George Luks: An American Artist", exhib. cat. (Wilkes-Barre: Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes College, 1987).

NOTES:
1 . "George B. Luks Found Dead in 6th Av. at Dawn," unidentified clipping, Luks family scrapbook, private collection.
2. The society was a student group of the Art Students League that held an annual meeting to satirize popular, but conventional, paintings exhibited at the National Academy of Design.
3 . Sadakichi Hartman, "An Estimate of George Luks," "Stylus" 1 (December 1909): 11.

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