Tourists

Soon after Elizabeth Olds arrived in New York City in 1921 on a scholarship to the Art Students League, she came under the wing of Ashcan School painter George Luks (1866-1933). Olds eventually became his assistant. Luks stressed the value of observing everyday life and the immediacy of the quick sketch. Depicting social realities would be an ongoing theme in Olds' work. In time she added her own lampooning sense of humor to produce inventive prints like Tourists. The Minneapolis-born Olds was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship to study art in Europe, in 1926.