drawing teacher, curator, librarian and clergyman, was a Baptist minister who came to New Zealand with William Colenso in 1834, having been engaged to superintend the mission press. Wade devoted most of his time to missionary work until his unorthodox views on baptism forced him into retirement. In 1842 he left for Van Diemen’s Land to become minister of the Harrington Street Chapel, Hobart Town. There he published A Journey in the Northern Isle of New Zealand dedicated to Lady (Jane) Franklin, wife of the governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
Early in 1849 Wade gave a lecture on reading at the Hobart Town Mechanics Institute. In June 1850 he lectured on 'Drawing and Perspective’, illustrating his talk with a number of drawings, many by his pupils, and 'by diagrams explanatory of the principles of the art of drawing, to which in his evening’s lecture, the reverend lecturer principally confined himself, promising at another period of the session to revert again to the latter’. In June 1852 the Hobart Town Courier reported that Wade was conducting drawing classes on Butler Williams’s system at the Mechanics Institute where he was curator and librarian. At the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition he showed J. Northcote, Esq., as a Falconer, from Northcote’s Life-Size Painting . After he died at Albert Street, East Melbourne, on 25 October 1891, aged 88, his obituary noted: 'He showed considerable ability as an artist and made numerous water-colour sketches of New Zealand and Tasmanian scenery’.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2011
