E. G. Lutz
Biography:
E.G. Lutz (1868-1951) was an American cartoonist and author known for his how-to art manuals and books about the developing film industry.
Lutz’s most influential work, Animated Cartoons (1920), was the first book dedicated to the production of animated drawings. Walt Disney used Animated Cartoons as a guide throughout the 1920s, and he has called finding the book at the library “one of the most important and useful events in my life.”
Lutz was born Edwin George Lutz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were German immigrants who died of tuberculosis when their four children were all less than twelve years old.
Starting at age eleven, Lutz attended Nazareth Hall, a boarding school that taught music, drawing, and painting. Later in his youth, Lutz studied at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art under Thomas Eakins, a prominent realist painter. Lutz also attended the art school Academie Julian in Paris, France at the age of thirty-two.
Lutz’s first work, What to Draw and How to Draw It (1913), is a step-by-step drawing book for beginning artists. His most popular book, Drawing Made Easy (1921), was written specifically for young artists.