 |
 |
|||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Theodore Lukits intended to become a portrait painter from the time he began to study painting. He loved the challenge of painting the human figure and felt that portraiture would assure him a steady income while giving him the freedom to paint landscapes and murals. The painters that were his mentors had all studied the figure, and figurative painting was the thrust of Lukits’ entire education, but among his instructors Wellington J. Reynolds was the only artist who specialized in portraiture. Lukits credited Reynolds with teaching him how to build a career as formal portrait painter. The young artist won his first commissions in Chicago while he was still completing his studies and his Chicago portrait of the silent film vamp Theda Bara led to his move west. Once Lukits was established in Los Angeles, he rapidly established himself as a fashionable portrait painter, his success being aided in no small measure by the publicity that he received for his portraits of Hollywood figures like Mae Murray, Ethyl Wade and Dolores del Rio. He painted figures from the business and social worlds as well as from show business, and while “bust portraits” made up the bulk of his portraits, he did a number of larger works as well as many alla prima “sketch portraits” that were more affordable than his major works. Lukits valued his work highly and even during the dark days of the Great Depression he was able to demand more fifteen-hundred dollars for a major portrait. Like all portrait painters, he chafed at the difficulty of pleasing difficult sitters, but between these works and his teaching, he was able to chart his own course with only a few brief periods where he was beset by financial difficulties. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
||||
| TNL 384, Oil on Canvas , 30 1/2" x 24" "Eleanor Merriam Lukits" Painted circa 1936, this is a highly finished and exquisitely detailed portrait of the artist's first wife that features the unique color palette, tinted light and dramatic use of chiarascuro that Lukits was known for. (Private Collection) [enlarge image] |
TNL 394, Pastel on Paper, 27 1/2" x 22" "Eleanor Merriam" "Eleanor Merria," is one of the artist's highly finished portrait pastels. Painted in 1933, when the sitter was the painter's paramour, Eleanor Merriam, was twenty-four, it was exhibited and reproduced in the Los Angeles Times. [enlarge image] |
||||
 |
 |
||||
| TNL 411, Oil on Canvas, 47 " x 36 " "Master Leonard and Miss Irene Southby" (1926-27) This portrait of the art dealer Maxwell Southby's children was one of two paintings that Lukits did of the Southby children, one of which was done as a commission for a portrait Southby arranged. This was exhibited at the Southby Salon and the Montmartre Cafe exhibitions. (Collection, California Art Club) [enlarge image] |
TNL 412, Oil on Canvas , 39" x 33" "Arrangement in Lavendar" This portrait was painted in 1918, when the artist was twenty. The sitter was a Chicago socialite whose name has been lost over the decades. Even though this portrait is early, Lukits's lush color and dramatic lighting is already present. [enlarge image] |
|||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
| TNL 416, Oil on Canvas , 36" x 30" "Starlet, Portrait Sketch" This was a demonstration portrait of a young actress that was painted alla prima in one 3 1/2-hour siting. |
TNL 417, Oil on Panel, 30" x 24" "Preliminary Sketch for William Wyler's Mother's Portrait " This preliminary work was a study for a larger, more ambitious portrait of the famous film director William Wyler's (1902-1981) Swiss mother. It is not known whether the larger portrait was completed, but Lukits' records contain no mention of one. (c. 1942) |
|||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
| TNL 420, Oil on Panel, 27 1/2" x 23" "Sketch Portrait of Harry Newman" (c. 1945) Harry Newman was a Beverly Hills businessman who served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, when this alla prima sketch portrait was painted. |
TNL 419, Oil on Panel, 24" x 18" "Portrait Study of Mr. Ferder" (1925) This early portrait study may have been done as a demonstraion or as a preliminary work. Nothing other than the sitter's name appears in the artist's records. |
|||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
| TNL 439, Oil on CanvasPanel, 48" x 36" "Portrait of Ethyl Wade" Ethyl Wade was a young actress who married a doctor and became a socialite. This is a very decorative 1920s portrait with the sitter wearing a "sheath dress" and an exotic mink-edged shawl. (Private Collection) |
TNL TBA, Oil on Panel, 37" x 27 1/2" "String of Pearls" "String of Pearls" was painted in 1946. When it was acquired by Morseburg Galleries in the late 1970s the elderly artist could not recall who the sitter was - actress or novelist. It was recently sold to a collector in Beverly Hills. (Private Collection) |
|||||||||