George A. Lucas

Work Following the death of his father and older brother, Lucas returned to Baltimore in 1856, only to move to Paris a year later. He lived there on an annuity from his father's estate and worked as an agent for art collectors and dealers in the United States such as Samuel Putnam Avery, John Taylor Johnston, Cyrus Lawrence, William Henry Vanderbilt, and Henry Field. He is perhaps most recognized for helping to build the collection of William Thompson Walters, for whom he purchased pieces by Honoré Daumier, Léon Gérôme, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Antoine-Louis Barye, Théodore Rousseau, and Paul Delaroche. Lucas' responsibilities as an art dealer for these American business men also included overseeing commissions on their behalf, shipping out food packages, acting as a Parisian tour guide, and hosting dinner parties.

Collection Lucas had a substantial collection, with a large number or prints by Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. At his death, he owned 19,000 prints, 300 paintings, and 170 bronze sculptures. Two months before his death, Lucas bequeathed his art to Henry Walters with the understanding that it would ultimately go to the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts (MICA), which had been destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. Thus, an uproar erupted within the Baltimore art community in 1995 when MICA threatened to sell their portion of Lucas' collection for resources to better fit their mission. Many scholars, who especially appreciate Lucas' prints because they offer a comprehensive view of nineteenth-century graphic art, had enjoyed the convenience of the entire collection being housed in a single city.