The Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts commissioned John Luke to paint a mural to commemorate the Festival of Britain in 1951. He personally decided to make the focus of the work Sir Arthur Chichester, the founder of modern Belfast, reading from King James 1’s Royal Charter of 1613, which essentially gave royal assent to the formation of the Corporation of Belfast now know as Belfast City Council.

In the background of the scene are the various industries on which the prosperity of Belfast would be built in the centuries that would follow – glass making, shipbuilding, rope making, engineering and the various elements of the linen industry with a bleaching green, flax growing, spinning and weaving. The backdrop to this being the huge Cavehill which dominates Belfast's skyline from the north.