 Luke, as we have seen, was a quiet, somewhat withdrawn figure.His severely Spartan lifestyle seems to have sapped his energy completely by the mid 1950s and possibly, too, he suffered a crisis of confidence as the post-war world took shape and the inexorable advance of Modern painting overwhelmed the traditional values which he espoused.Nowadays, with Modernism itself everywhere in retreat, the values represented by John Luke have again become appealing and reassuring to us.