Lucas was a landscape, portrait, figure and still life painter as well as a lecturer and teacher. He studied at Heatherlys, the RA Schools, St John's Wood, the British Academy and Rome (1888-1889).  His paintings are redolent in meticulous detail.  His still life pictures often had moralistic titles, such as Dust Crowns All or Foes In The Guise Of Friends, and in one picture a Boy Scout in uniform rebukes two children who have taken a bird's nest. 

Suffering poverty and neglect in his later years, Lucas's reputation was re-established when his work began to be noticed on the art market in the 1970s. Geraldine Norman wrote an article called 'Blowing The Dust Off A Forgotten Pre-Impressionist' in The Times in 1972.