BONHAMS 24 NOVEMBER

Paintings by the Belfast artist John Luke are a relative rarity at auction and his more of interest when it does appear. In 1999 his painting The Bridge was sold at Sotheby's -still a record for the artist. There are a number of reasons for the paucity of Luke's output. He was a painstakingly slow worker, especially when he began to use egg tempera. Also, World War II severely affected him. He had to move out of Belfast to the countryside and hardly completed a painting for the duration of the conflict. There was a brief return to form between the end of the war and the early 1950s but after that his career petered out. Apart from the occasional mural, he produced little until his death in 1975.