Adam's Important Irish Art 27th March 2019

60 55 JOHN LUKE RUA (1906 -1975) Nude Male Oil on board, 69 x 23cm (27 x 9’’) Provenance: Estate of the artist; Private Collection. Exhibited: John Luke (1906-1975), Ulster Museum, Belfast and Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 27 January–4 March 1978 (no. 4); John Luke: Work from The Studio, The Bell Gallery, Belfast, February–March 1980 (no. 3) € 4,000 - 6,000 Born into a working-class part of north Belfast John Luke initially left school to work in the city’s shipyards and then its linen mills. His extraordinary talent at drawing brought him to Belfast School of Art when he was still a teenager. After enrolling in evening classes his teachers encouraged him to become a full-time student. In 1927, after wining prizes at the Sorella Art Exhibition and the Royal Dublin Society’s Taylor Art Competition, Luke won the prestigious Dunville Art Scholarship, which would enable him to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London for the next three years. This ‘Male Nude’ was painted at the Slade under the tutelage of Henry Tonks, one of the most influential teachers of drawing in the early twentieth century. It was completed in the ‘life painting’ class and its combination of incredibly fine drawing and tiny feathery cross-hatched brushstrokes, to build up light and shade, demonstrates Luke’s outstanding abilities as a draughtsman. Luke later recalled that Tonks had initially been critical of his drawings, stating ‘these are rather good, as far as they go, but there’s no form in any of them’, and subsequently Luke concentrated all his efforts to perfect his drawing skills. The striking facial features of this male nude would later be re-used for the central figure in Luke’s painting ‘The Rehearsal’, which was commissioned by the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (now Ulster Museum) in 1948 as a demonstration of the tempera tech- nique. Its anatomical fidelity also recalls Tonk’s drawings especially the male nudes he made as part of his work recording wounded veterans during the First World War. Tonks had initially trained as a surgeon and according to his biographer ‘used his anatomical knowledge to teach life drawing as a swift and intelligent activity’. Luke drew and painted many male nudes at the Slade employing a variety of different materials. A further example is his ‘Seated Figure’ (lot 54 above) which is quickly, and brilliantly, sketched with chalks. Tonks encouraged his students to work with pastels and chalks when drawing from life (like the old masters). Whether in chalk or oil paint Luke fully realized Tonk’s desire to see the model as a ‘corporeous unity’, to render the ‘flesh’ so it was almost tactile. Dr. Joseph McBrinn Belfast School of Art Ulster University 54 JOHN LUKE RUA (1906-1975) Seated Figure Pencil and chalk, 39.5 x 31cm (15½ x 12¼’’) Provenance: Estate of the artist; Private Collection. Exhibited: John Luke (1906-1975), Ulster Museum, Belfast and Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 27 January–4 March 1978 (no. 79); John Luke: Work from The Studio, The Bell Gallery, Belfast, February–March 1980 (no. 23) € 1,000 - 1,500