Luks began his working life in vaudeville. He and his younger brother played the Pennsylvania and New Jersey vaudeville circuit in the early 1880s while still in their teens. He left performing when he decided to pursue a career as an artist. Luks knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist and studied briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before he traveled to Europe, where he attended several art schools and studied the Old Masters. (He became a particular admirer of Spanish and Dutch painting, especially the work of Velazquez and Frans Hals.) Manet's energy and technique also appealed to Luks. Later he went to Düsseldorf, where he lived with a distant relative, allegedly a retired lion-tamer, and took classes at the Düsseldorf School of Art. He eventually abandoned Düsseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris. In 1893, he returned to Philadelphia, where he eventually found work as an illustrator for the "Philadelphia Press".