Charles Mahoney:
Study for Fortune & the Boy at the Well, mural at Brockley County School, 1933
Framed (ref: 233)

Signed and dated 1933 
Oil on paper (arched top),
45.7 x 26.7 cm (18 x 10 in.)

Tags: Charles Mahoney oil murals religion TOP 100 Murals catalogue

Provenance: The Artists Daughter; thence by descent

The commission to decorate Brockley (now Prendergast) School in South London, was the result of an appeal by William Rothenstein,
Principal of the RCA, for students to be given the opportunity to experiment with mural painting. Mahoney was invited to organise the
scheme at the beginning of 1932. He selected Evelyn Dunbar, Mildred Eldridge and Violet Martin to produce some of the murals. Situated
in the school hall, in five arched-top panels, the subjects of the murals were taken from Aesop’s Fables. The paintings were executed in
oil on to existing plaster. They were opened by Oliver Stanley, Minister of Education in 1936.

In the fable of Fortune and the Boy at the Well a sleeping boy is woken  by Fortune, anxious that he should not fall into the well.