John Luke RUA (1906 -1975)Untitled - Men at Work on a Boat Pencil and wash, 44 x 67cm (17¼ x 26¼'')SignedProvenance: Sale, these rooms, 3/7/2007, lot 191, where purchased by the current owner.This drawing is one of a handful of surviving examples that show John Luke’s meticulous process of squaring up his compositions for either easel paintings or larger decorative murals. He would first prepare small sketches, using sheets from a sketchbook, of individual figures, buildings, etc., and when the final design was worked out it was then divided into a grid. Each square of this grid was then transferred onto a larger canvas or primed wall. Luke learnt this process of squaring up from his two principal teachers - Ivor Beaumont at Belfast School of Art and Henry Tonks at the Slade. Beaumont, who was a member of the Society of Painters in Tempera, encouraged Luke’s interest in mural techniques (such as tempera and fresco) and engaged him as an assistant in his own mural commissions in Belfast. Tonks was one of the principal advocates of mural painting in the inter-war years and encouraged Luke to seek mural commissions in London. This drawing of a circus arriving in a city is not known to have been developed into an easel painting by Luke and it is more than likely a design for a mural. It can be dated to the 1930s. The frieze of elephants, giraffes, circus folk and onlookers, enfolding like a mediaeval pageant or an intricate Indian miniature, recalls the work of Luke’s slightly older Slade contemporaries, Mary Adshead and Rex Whistler, and also something of Luke’s older Irish contemporary Jack B. Yeats who, like Luke, would return to the circus as a theme throughout his career.Joseph McBrinn, February 2020