[citation needed] Lukeman is known to have attended classes at the National Academy for Design beginning in 1890, where records exist for his registration for the antique school (for two years),[3] and to have followed this with study at Columbia University.

[1] Lukeman's independent work began in this new studio, and included the monuments in which he would come to specialize,[3] as well as "portrait busts and statues, bas-reliefs, ornamental sculpture,"[1][3] which have been described as being "architecturally effective and often remarkable in conception.

This mountain carving depicted the confederacy's president, Jefferson Davis, and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J.

"Stonewall" Jackson (and their respective horses Blackjack, Traveller, and Little Sorrel), in DeKalb County, Georgia, near Atlanta;[3][citation needed] there, Lukeman designed and supervised sculpting of the monument after removing the earlier work of Gutzon Borglum[8] (the original commissionee, who had resigned[3]).

David Dearinger notes that "Lukeman was criticized for taking over another artist's work,"[3] and that "he used Borglum's existing scheme," though altering it to be a bas-relief whose figures would ultimately be over 150 feet tall.

[3] When funding ran out in the advent of the Great Depression, Lukeman would continue to pay the craftsmen until his own means were exhausted,[citation needed] after which the carving would remain incomplete for decades (until Walker Hancock and Roy Faulkner completed an edited version of the Lukeman design in 1970).

][citation needed] Two significant influences were those whose training he extensively received, Launt Thompson and Daniel Chester French.