Albert Durer Lucas (1828-1918)

LUCAS Albert Durer (Great Britain)
1828, Salisbury – 1918, ?

Albert Durer Lucas's teacher and mentor was his father, the prominent English sculptor and engraver Richard Cocle Lucas. By naming his son the sonorous name of the great master of the German Renaissance, Lucas Sr. showed his passion for the Renaissance and antiquity. He regularly exhibited his imitations on ancient and Renaissance themes at the World Exhibition in London, and in 1910 Lucas the son made a sensational statement, claiming that his father was the real author of the bust of Flora, acquired shortly before by the Berlin Museum as the work of the great Leonardo.
Unlike his father, Albert Durer, Lucas was inspired not by the high art of the past, but by nature, seen as close as possible. The artist’s works are often called “still lifes,” but in reality they are corners of living thickets, where moths and dragonflies flutter over the interweaving of ferns, mosses, flowers and herbs. Plants and insects are depicted by the artist with the precision of a naturalist, but there is no dryness or protocol in the works; on the contrary, they are full of the breath of life. The painting “Butterfly” is a vivid example of his creativity. The main space of the small-sized canvas is given to the image of a flowering heather bush. A butterfly froze at its foot. Carefully and inquisitively, the artist peers into the finest pattern of her wings, admires the heather flowers, the moss covering the ground and the thickets of fern in the background. The composition is not a closed little world, but part of a large, continuously changing kingdom of nature.

The artist successfully exhibited his works both at London exhibitions (1859 – 1878) and abroad. In 1910, his work attracted much attention at the Berlin Floral Exhibition.