to the highest level of organisation and completeness I desire: the other way I lead to disintegrate in looseness and frustration with its inevitable weakness.' The precision characteristic of his work was manifested, too, in his appearance and personal manner. Dark haired, in stature he was erect and spare of build. Always tidy, his clothes brushed, his hair short, he was, in Hewitt's words, 'not at all close to the romantic stereotype of the artist'. Inspiration Apart from his work as a practising artist, he taught from time to time in the Belfast College of Art, where he influenced a generation of students 'especially in the matter of drawing', as he once put it. Although principally a painter, throughout his career he occasionally made sculptures, such as the Stone Head, Seraph of c. 1940 (Ulster Museum)- indeed it was for sculpture that he won the Robert Ross Prize at the Slade School. He was also much interested in philosophical theories of art. In the 1930s, for example, as John Hewitt has recorded, topical books such as Roger Fry's Vision and Design, Clive Bell's Art and R.H. Wilenski's Modern Movement in Art directed his thinking. Exhibitions From the late 1930s until 1943, when he produced Pax, there was a gap in his output, occasioned, no doubt, by his move to County Armagh in order to escape Belfast after the Blitz. In 1946 he held his first one-man exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, and this was followed two years later by a similar show, held under the aegis of CEMA, nearby at number 55A Donegal Place. In 1950, to celebrate the Festival of Britain the following year, he was commissioned to paint in the City Hall, Belfast, a mural representing the history of the city, a work which brought his name to the attention of a wider audience. In later years, other commissions followed for murals in the Masonic Hall, Rosemary Street, 1956, and the College of Technology at Millfield in the 1960s. He also carved in relief coats of arms for the two Governors of Northern Ireland, Lords Wakehurst, 1959, and Erskine of Rerrick, 1965. He was, too, a member of the Royal Ulster Academy. Later life John Luke died in Belfast on 4 February 1975, just a month into his sixty-ninth year. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held, in association with the Arts Councils of