Born in Vermont, Lucas began formal art training at age sixteen in Boston and later studied under noted animal painter Scott Leighton. She is know to have worked in New York and visited Lexington, Kentucky, for the first time in 1912. Over the years she executed many portraits of famous trotters and Thoroughbreds, including Man o’ War. Some of the era’s top owners, including Colonel E. R. Bradley, August Belmont, Mrs. Marian DuPont Somerville, and Frank Bishop, commissioned her paintings.