Printmaker Julius J. Lankes was born in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from the Buffalo Commercial and Electro-Mechanical Institute and worked as a draftsman prior to his studies at the Art Students’ League of Buffalo and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Lankes produced his first woodcut in 1917 and over the course of his expansive career produced over 1,300 woodcut designs.

During the 1930s, Lankes taught art for seven years at Wells College in Aurora, NY. In the early 1940s, during the World War II years, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, superseding NASA-National Aeronautics and Space Administration), as head of technical illustrating in the reproduction section of Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, Langley, VA. Lankes exhibited regularly during his career and his works can be found in many museums, public and private collections in the United States, Canada and worldwide such as; The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, both in Washington, DC, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) in NYC, the British Museum, London, England and the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY to name a few. Memberships included the Society of American Graphic Artists, the American Artists Professional League, the Prairie Print Makers, the California Society of Print Makers, the Print Society of England, and the Saturday Sketch Club of Buffalo. In 1954 he was elected Academician Member at the National Academy of Design in New York City. Lankes maintained his home and studio both in Gardenville, NY and Hilton Village, Newport News, VA.

J. J. Lankes has been described as 'one of America’s foremost graphic artists.' Not only was he 'arguably the first genuine woodcut artist this country produced', he was the close friend of such poets and writers as Robert Frost and Sherwood Anderson, and author of A Woodcut Manual, the first reliable and comprehensive book on woodcutting published in North America, which appeared while he was at Wells. Lankes was commissioned on a regular basis to illustrate books, but the most famous of his designs were undoubtedly the ones he created for Robert Frost’s poetry.