As his reputation grew, Lucas increasingly mixed in society circles, and became firm friends with the famous society portrait painter John Singer Sargent who was his almost exact contemporary.
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Inspired by van Dyck and particularly Diego Velázquez, he excelled in depicting scenes from the English 16th- to 18th-century Tudor and Stuart periods, including in particular the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and the Jacobite rebellions.
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However, the end of Pax Britannica and the rise of Modernism left these twin pillars of John Seymour Lucas oeuvre slightly marooned and he is less than a household name today.
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He was born into an artistic London family, (he was the nephew of the painter John Lucas) and originally trained as a woodcarver, but turned his attention to portrait painting and entered first the St. Martin's Lane Art School and later the Royal Academy Schools.
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