page_title: Edwin G Lucas
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Edwin G Lucas / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil painting by Edwin G Lucas, painted in 1939
context_page_description: Edwin G Lucas 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.
context_section_description: 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. Instead, Edwin joined the Civil Service in Edinburgh and studied at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with a Bachelor of Law in 1934.
  Throughout the 1930s he painted conventional, well executed landscapes. 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.
caption: Diagnosis 1, 1939, Lucas's first Surrealist work
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