George Luks was born on August 13, 1867 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Luks received his first art instruction from his parents who pursued painting as a hobby. At seventeen he entered the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Later he went to Düsseldorf where he lived with a distant relative, a retired lion-tamer. He abandoned Düsseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris.

When he returned to America he worked as an artist for Philadelphia newspapers. In 1896 he was sent to Cuba as a war artist; rumor had it he was captured by the Spaniards and condemned to death as a spy, but he was deported instead and landed in New York, cold, hungry and broke.
In 1894 he joined the staff of the "Philadelphi...