John Luke was born in Belfast and was apprenticed at the York Street Flax Spinning Company. He later became a riveter at a Belfast shipyard but in 1925 enrolled full time at Belfast College of Art. He won the College's Dunville Scholarship in 1928 and this enabled him to attend the Slade School of Art in London. In 1931 he returned to Northern Ireland and held his first solo exhibition in 1946 at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. In 1950, to celebrate the Festival of Britain the following year, he was commissioned to paint a mural in the City Hall, Belfast, to represent the history of the city. It was among the last of his paintings. He died in Belfast in 1975. This painting of the canal locks at the mill village of Edenderry on the river Lagan demonstrates Luke at the height of his creative genius and also, perhaps, the optimism of the times.