painter and solicitor, migrated from England to New South Wales in 1858 and settled in Sydney where, with various partners, he practiced as a solicitor from 1863 to 1880. In 1865 he married Annette de Mestre (subsequently aunt of the painter Roy de Maistre ). Slade was a great admirer of Conrad Martens , a neighbour on the North Shore, and his watercolours often display many of Martens’s mannerisms. On 8 February 1878 he wrote to his mentor thanking him for 'the opportunity I have had for many years of rummaging in your studio, pausing and pondering over your sketches’. He purchased a number of Martens’s paintings between 1868 and 1878 and expressed his gratitude for 'the advantage of having such masterful productions in my own possession … incalculable to an amateur’. He lent one of his Martens views to the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition.
Slade exhibited as an amateur with the New South Wales Academy of Art from 1872 to 1877, showing watercolour, wash and pencil views of New South Wales from 1875. In 1874 he showed four oil paintings – Hawkesbury from Peat’s Ferry , The Basin, Refuge Bay, Pitt Water , On the Mulgoa Creek and View from the Blue Mountain Inn – but in 1877 had reverted to watercolour, exhibiting Creek, Nattai and Bumbo Creek, Bodalla in the medium. Said to have become colour-blind in the early 1870s, Slade returned to England in 1880. He died there 16 years later.
Slade’s album of 80 watercolour views around Sydney and on the Nepean sold at Sotheby’s (London) in November 1984 for $A52 000. The scenes, dated 1858-64, include competent and rare interior views. A later album now containing 74 watercolours is owned by the National Library (some 30 sketches were sold from it in the 1970s). They were produced between 1867 and 1869 and also include views of Sydney Harbour ( Balmain Regatta, 30 Nov. 1867 ), the Nepean ( The Hawkesbury Peats Ferry, 15 Jany 1869 ) and the south coast ( Twofold Bay, 11 February 1868 ). Other sketches were made on a trip to the Blue Mountains (three views of Govett’s Leap dated 26 October 1868 and Hartley Kerosene Works, 27 Oct. 1868 ) and there are 12 views near Hobart Town made on his first visit to Tasmania from 15-25 February 1868 ( All Saints Ch. Hobarton, Tasmania, 22 Feby/68 ). A watercolour of Hobart Town dated 17 February 1868 is in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery together with a few other views and a tiny sketchbook containing 43 drawings and watercolours, including sketches made on a second visit to Tasmania (this time with his wife and child) from 17 December 1869 to 17 January 1870. The Mitchell Library also holds a number of his pencil and pen-and-ink sketches. A late work, Sydney from Fortification Road (1879, pencil and white), was sold at Christie’s (Australia) in September 1984.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
