Images Dated 13th September 2010

The Three Dancers

The Three Dancers (1945). Luke, John 1906-1975. The Three Dancers is a prime example of Luke?s highly stylised and precise technique. The flowing lines of the dancers? arms, the bending boughs of the bush and the wavy undulations of the landscape, create the rhythm of the dance in a powerfully immediate way. The subtle finish and intense colour derives from the use of tempera, a medium Luke began experimenting with in 1933 and which fascinated him. By the 1940s, Luke had become virtually obsessed with the craftsmanship involved in creating works like The Three Dancers. Indeed, such was his preoccupation with the making of the picture that he produced lengthy notes on its technical construction. Luke spent almost his entire career living and working in Belfast with the exception of a period in County Armagh during the war years. This picture, painted whilst he was living there, is the first of a number of almost visionary compositions produced in the mid-1940s possibly inspired by the closing stages of the war. Date: 1945

© National Museums NI / MARY EVANS

Under the Cherry Tree

Under the Cherry Tree (1884). Lavery, Sir John 1856-1941. Born in Belfast, Lavery began his artistic training in Glasgow. During the early 1880s he studied in Paris and made visits to the artists? colony at Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau. At Grez Lavery was one of many young artists to set up their easels in the fields around the picturesque village and work en plein-air, a term used to describe painting in the open air. Under the Cherry Tree is larger and more ambitious than any Lavery had previously attempted. It is a youthful masterwork, heavily influenced by Bastien-Lepage and was intended to display the painterly techniques he had recently acquired through study in France. The composition of Under the Cherry Tree is divided into three distinct areas and Lavery employed a different technique in the painting of each. Date: 1884

© National Museums NI / MARY EVANS

Thomas, Lord Coningsby

Thomas, Lord Coningsby 1656 - 1729 (1692). Bate, Thomas fl. c. 1692. This is the only work known by Thomas Bate, who worked in Ireland towards the end of the seventeenth century. The work, an exquisite oval canvas, was discovered in 1973. Bate is not mentioned in the bible of Irish art studies - Stickland's Dictionary of Irish artists - and only a passing reference is made to him in the eighteenth-century notebooks of George Vertue, who identified Bate as living mostly in Ireland and being well known for painting on glass. Bate was probably a topographical painter and may also have worked as a miniaturist. Lord Coningsby, an ardent supporter of William III, acted as paymaster-general of the Williamite forces in Ireland in 1690. Coningsby fought in the battle of the Boyne and attended King William when he was wounded. In this painting he wears a colourful version of Roman dress, and is shown seated before his residence, Hampton Court. Date: 1692

© National Museums NI / MARY EVANS