Portrait of a Young Girl (Antoinette Kraushaar)

George Benjamin Luks occasionally painted formal portraits such as this one of the fifteen-year-old Antoinette Kraushaar (1902--1992), who posed in her grammar school graduation dress. Although her father was a respected art dealer (she followed him in the profession), she had never actually seen an artist at work before sitting for Luks. She later recalled, "It was very interesting because you could see how he would put a strong stroke in the painting--I couldn't see the painting, but I could see him as he worked on it. At one point he said there was an awful lot of white, so he went around the studio and came up with a dusty piece of blue linen that he draped over my shoulder."