Edwin G Lucas

Edwin G Lucas (30 March 1911 – 9 December 1990) was a Scottish Modernist artist. He was an amateur, self-taught apart from evening classes at Edinburgh College of Art, but during the period 1939-1952 he produced Surrealist works that are said to be unprecedented in Scottish art of the period.

His work attracted little attention from the art world at the time, but it started receiving recognition following its "discovery" in 2013 by curators of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Early career

Edwin George Lucas was born in Leith in 1911, and grew up in Juniper Green, a village on the outskirts of Edinburgh. He was educated at Juniper Green Primary School and then George Heriot's School.

He was interested in a career in art, but his family discouraged this because his uncle, E G Handel Lucas, who is now a well regarded Victorian artist, struggled to make a decent living and lived the latter part of his life in poverty. These were mainly watercolours, with a strong emphasis on the countryside close to the family home in Juniper Green. They were often accepted for exhibition by the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) and the Royal Scottish Academy

One of these paintings attracted attention from the French journal La Revue Moderne des Arts et de la Vie. Its review called him "artiste extrêmement cultivé...un artiste plein de claire simplicité" (a highly educated artist...a painter of great clarity and simplicity). It also commented on his "liberté d'esprit et sa souplesse de style" (freedom of spirit and stylistic versatility), attributes that were to become defining characteristics of his later work.

Influence of Surrealism

Surrealist works were shown at a number of exhibitions in Edinburgh during the late 1930s. One example was the SSA exhibition in December 1937, Lucas would certainly have attended because one of his watercolours was also included. Another example was an exhibition at Gladstone's Land Galleries in June 1939 by a group of graduates of Edinburgh College of Art, including William Gear.

Gear and Lucas were both close friends of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, from whom Lucas started renting a studio in 1939.

Post-War work

Lucas was a committed pacifist and as a conscientious objector he worked in hospitals at Killearn and Raigmore during the war. He returned to Edinburgh in 1944 and the immediate post-war years were a very creative and prolific time for him. He returned to work as a Civil Servant, in the Estate Duty Office, but also attended evening classes at Edinburgh College of Art and saw himself as a serious painter who had a day job.

Posthumous recognition

In 2009 his family started renting gallery space in Edinburgh to hold occasional exhibitions, but his work remained almost completely unknown until a letter to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art led to five paintings being acquired. They were hung beside works by Picasso and Miró in the "New Acquisitions" exhibition from October 2013 to May 2014.

A number of newspapers published stories about the discovery of this "lost Surrealist", including The Daily Telegraph, and "Jagged Generation: William Gear’s Contemporaries and Influences". Also, two exhibitions devoted to his work were held at the Fine Art Society, and his work was represented in "A New Era: Scottish Modern Art 1900-1950" at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Recognition increased further with a high-profile solo exhibition "Edwin G. Lucas: An Individual Eye" at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh from August 2018 to February 2019. That exhibition then travelled to England and was shown at the Beecroft Art Gallery in Southend-on-Sea from June to September 2023.