In a tribute to the artist Jonathan Wade (1941–1973), Dublin City Council has mounted a commemorative blue plaque on the Wade family home at 2 Walkinstown Avenue, Dublin 12.
In a tribute to the artist Jonathan Wade (1941–1973), Dublin City Council has mounted a commemorative blue plaque on the Wade family home at 2 Walkinstown Avenue, Dublin 12.
Wade was born in the Thomas Street area of Dublin’s Liberties. Having completed his primary education, he was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to his father’s trade as a butcher. However, he didn’t settle and instead decided to pursue his passion for art. He acquired skills where he could and enrolled in part-time courses in the National College of Art. To supplement his artistic career, he worked as a part-time teacher of art in Clondalkin Vocational School.
Wade worked for a period in the Fergus O’Farrell Studios, where he learnt woodworking skills. The studios were also the venue for Wade’s first one-man show, in 1966. Two years later, he had another solo exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy. His reputation as an original artistic voice grew through the 1960s and culminated in a major exhibition in 1970 at the Project Arts Centre, then operating in Abbey Street. Wade’s interest in Marxism and left-wing politics had an influence on his creative output. The thirty-seven paintings in the Project show depicted a crumbling industrial world – urban landscapes of rusted metal junk imbued with a sense of industrial catastrophe.
Wade’s work was included in ‘Rosc ’71’ and at the ‘Critics’ Choice’ exhibition at the Project Arts Centre the same year. In 1972, he held his final solo exhibition at the Davis Gallery and was awarded the top prize at the Oireachtas Art Exhibition.
Tragically, a motorbike accident in Clondalkin on 22 January 1973 cut Wade’s life short. That same year, his work was shown in two group exhibitions, at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Trinity College Dublin in 1975.
Just thirty-one years of age at the time of his death, Wade had already produced a powerful body of work and was regarded as a future leading figure in Irish art. Jack Harte
