Luks portrays the ability of working-class children to experience pleasure despite their circumstances. Sentimental or otherwise, he painted the truth, as he saw it, as his friend Everett Shinn wrote. "The Wrestlers," on the other hand, is a testament to masculine bravado, a massive, sumptuously painted canvas in which one beefy man has been pinned to the mat by another; the face of the defeated wrestler, turned upside down, stares straight at us. The pose is contorted, every muscle bulges, and the paint reflects the sweat and strain of the match.