Edward Lucas
Edward George Handel Lucas of Croydon was a meticulous and beautiful still life painter whose attention to detail was such that his paintings rarely took less than six months to complete and very often longer. Such is the scarcity of his work that his life story has remained totally forgotten until recently when his diaries of newspaper cuttings were discovered.
Named after his father's favorite composer, Handel Lucas was hailed a child genius when he first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879 at the age of seventeen. From then on his work appeared regularly at the annual Academy exhibitions and always drew notices praising his consistent quality: Mr Handel Lucas... possesses in a more marked degree than any still life painter I have met with, that genius which a great writer has informed us is 'an infinite capacity for taking pains.
By 1910, with the tide of fashion turning in favour of Impressionism, Handel Lucas found his work became increasingly difficult to sell. Three years later, it was recorded that he was working on a picture in an attempt to pay the rent bill of £60. The landlady would not wait for its completion and the families were evicted.
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