A Ballad of Jonathan Wade
A presentation of the artist’s work
From the 23rd May to 3rd June, an exhibition of artworks by Jonathan Wade in the Round Tower Visitors Centre – Brú Chrónáin - will commemorate this artist who lived and worked in Clondalkin. Admission free.
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. So highly was he regarded at the time of his death that an immediate retrospective of his work was mounted at the Library in Trinity College. Smaller exhibitions followed. Yet the intervening years have seen this artist sink into undeserved obscurity, chiefly because those who own his paintings seldom offer them for sale. This new event intends to reacquaint the public with one of the most exciting painters of the last century.