Theodore Lukits - Marriages

Marriages

Theodore Lukits met the aspiring artist and actress Eleanor Merriam (1909–1948) in 1931 when she came to study with him. Despite her parent's opposition, a personal relationship developed rapidly. She became one of her husband's favorite models. He painted a well exhibited pastel portrait of her in 1932, a prize-winning artistic oil portrait titled "Gesture" in 1934 and another portrait in 1936. In 1937, the couple eloped to Santa Barbara and were married. In 1940, they purchased a comfortable Spanish-style home on Citrus avenue, just south of Wilshire Boulevard, adjacent the exclusive Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Under Lukits' instruction, Eleanor Merriam Lukits became a fair painter. However, her work was always reminiscent of her husband's because she shared similar props for her still lifes and painted the same models. Additionally, at least in the early 1930s she worked by her future husband's side. He often worked on her pastels and paintings and his bolder, more confident, stroke can be discerned according to his biographer. Eleanor Lukits was outgoing and so she drew her husband into the social whirl of Los Angeles where she proved to be adept at cultivating patrons and portrait sitters. The couple showed their work together extensively and she participated in many of the exhibitions for women artists of the Southland in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1948, as she and her husband were transferring gasoline from one container to another in their basement, the vapors were ignited by a pilot light. Both Eleanor and Theodore were burned, but her internal injuries led to her death in the hospital. Several years later, Theodore Lukits began dating Lucille Greathouse, a Disney animator and also one of his students. They were married in 1952 after a short courtship. Lukits and his second wife lived a quieter social life but they exhibited and were active with a number of Southern California's art organizations in the 1950s and early 1960s. From 1952 to 1990, Lucile Lukits helped her husband run his school and business affairs and her assistance helped put the school on firmer financial footing. After her husband's death, Lucile Lukits took over management of her husbands artwork and estate before passing the responsibility on to his students. In 1997, feeling the effects of Parkinson's Disease, she moved to Utah to be closer to her family. She passed away in Utah in 2003 at the age of ninety-four. There were no children from either of Lukits' marriages.