Edward George Handel Lucas

Edward George Handel Lucas was born in Croydon on 4 May 1861. So Lucas did not benefit from a classical or advanced education, but there is evidence of him drawing and painting from age 6 or 7 and receiving some encouragement from the school. ==Artistic education==

Although Lucas left school at age 14, he was recognised as a child prodigy as a painter He "studied the antique" at the British Museum ==Early career, 1880s==

Lucas continued to paint flower pictures as his career developed and also more elaborate still lifes. These were notable for an astonishing level of detail and realism across the whole picture. A good example is Dust Crowns All, which is described in a lengthy article about Lucas's career to date, published in The Croydon Advertiser in 1887. The writer says "to see the delicacy of the work one has to use a magnifying glass, and the more closely it is examined, the more beauty will be found". This level of detail and realism came at a cost. The Croydon Advertiser article says "none of his exhibited pictures has taken less than six months of real honest work" and that Dust Crowns All had already taken "fifteen months of almost incessant labour" and was not finished yet. These works were very well received. Lucas had at least one painting accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts almost every year between 1879 and 1891, sometimes exhibited "on the line", a rare privilege for an "outsider". He received flattering reviews in The Daily News, The Magazine of Art, The Athenaeum and The Times. He told The Croydon Advertiser he was keen to move on from still life to figurative work, but he had continued to paint still lifes "for the last two or three years for economical reasons, as they always sell, when an experimental figure picture might ruin me by remaining without a purchaser". This fear would resonate later in his career. He went to Italy for a year or two around 1888–1889, studying at the British Academy in Rome and painting landscapes in Rome, Capri and Pompeii. ==Prime of his career, 1890s and early 1900s==

During the 1890s, Lucas painted mainly still lifes, often with anecdotal and sometimes moralistic subjects such as ''Sairey Gamp's Treasures or Silent Advocates of Temperance''. There were only about one or two major paintings per year. But it did not sell and the time spent painting it exhausted his capital. Thus started a cycle on indebtedness, borrowing money from family and friends to keep him going while he painted a new work, promising to pay them back when he sold it. His worst fears of 1887 were coming true! Ironically his prime in technical terms coincided with public taste moving away from the realism that Lucas prized. The Impressionists and their successors were becoming popular but Lucas dismissed them in strong terms and preferred to stick to his roots, painting "straight from nature". ==Debt and misfortune==

In 1908 Lucas suffered a bout of pneumonia and a few months later a nervous breakdown caused by worry over unpaid rates. Lucas suffered a fatal heart attack after his wife, Mary, was knocked down and injured by a car. He died on 4 April 1936, aged 74. ==Posthumous recognition==

The art world forgot all about E G Handel Lucas until one of his still lifes, Dust Crowns All, appeared in a Sotheby's sale of Victorian paintings in 1972. It was bid to £2000, unusually high for a still life by an unknown artist. It caught the attention of Geraldine Norman, Saleroom Correspondent for The Times and she published an article comparing Lucas's work favourably with that of William Harnett. Interest raised by that article led to more of Lucas's paintings being put on the market and successful sales have demonstrated that his work is appreciated once more. Geraldine mentions Lucas's two daughters visiting Sotheby's a day or so before the sale bringing various documents and press cuttings concerning their father's career. Amongst these a letter of 1892 concerned the sale of a painting "The Seven Ages of Man" to the Grosvenor Gallery which she recalled seeing at John Lobb Bootmaker, 9 St James's Street, where it still on display to this day. ==His nephew, Edwin G Lucas==

E G Handel Lucas had a nephew Edwin G Lucas who also became a notable artist. Edwin was inspired by Surrealism and developed his own "highly innovative take on Surrealism". Handel would probably not have approved, given his strong negative views on modernist art. Handel died very early in Edwin's career and his biggest influence was contributing to family pressure on Edwin not to rely on art as his sole means of making a living. ==References==