Coal Miners (Primary Title)
George Benjamin Luks, American, 1867 - 1933 (Artist)
In 1925, George Luks worked in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, on a mural commission intended to depict the discovery of coal in the region. Coal Miners, painted in the artist’s signature dark tones, records a subterranean setting where miners stand amid a maze of contrasting diagonals. A single arc of pale cyan watercolor indicates the above-ground world. Like his paintings of New York laborers, Luks’s depictions of Pennsylvania coal miners are reverential tributes. The large, muscular men dominate the composition, unbowed despite the dangerous conditions and physically taxing requirements of their task.
at lower right: George Luks
James W. and Frances Gibson McGlothlin Collection
"American Art from the McGlothlin Collection" Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1 May - 18 July 2010).
"The Independents: The Ashcan School & Their Circle from Florida Collections," Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida (1996).
"The Independents: The Ashcan School & Their Circle from Florida Collections," Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida (1996).
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