Jonathan Wade (1941-1973)
Invention 1912
Acrylic on canvas (1972)
Davis Gallery, Capel St.
€3750
A motor-bike accident on a frosty road near Clondalkin on 22nd January, 1973, deprived Ireland of one of its most original artists. Jonathan Wade was just 31 years old at the time, but he had already produced work of such amazing quality and variety that he was looked to as a future towering figure in Irish art. It was more than his mastery of painting that impressed: he manifested in his paintings a personal vision that was a scathing critique of the human being and of the environment he engineered.
Despite his coruscating vision, the paintings themselves exuded an extraordinary visual beauty, a combination that only the greatest artists have achieved. At the time of his death that an immediate retrospective of his work was mounted at the Library in Trinity College.