Watercolours 9¼"x13½", signed Ernst Dade.
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Watercolours, 9¼"x13½", signed Ernst Dade. A wide range of shipping, from cobble to steamer, roll across the choppy, summer blue sky. One of his early works, he used the affectation of signing himself Ernst, a habit he adopted while painting in Holland. His time spent as a seaman and his hobby of making model ships have obviously helped him to depict both shipping and their relationship with the sea accurately and sensitively.
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Watercolours, 6"x8½", signed Ernst Dade and dated (18)89. This pair of watercolours must have been painted almost as soon as Dade returned to Scarborough from the Chelsea studio he shared with Nelson Dawson. This is a sensitive, atmospheric little picture showing a fine, misty drizzle pervading the whole scene, but a gentle silver light adds life and sparkle to it through reflectiions in the sea and the foreground puddles. The price is for the pair.

One of a pair
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Watercolours, 6"x8½", signed Ernst Dade and dated (18)89. In this one of the pair, the light is stronger, but still gentle, casting soft shadows on the quayside. The same light shimmers around the figures and the boats. The price is for the pair.
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ERNEST DADE 1864 – 1935

Although born in Kensington, the son of a photographer, Dade’s family moved to Scarborough when he was a young child. He started his working life as a deck-hand on board the American yacht, Dauntless. At the age of twenty he entered the Acade´mie Julian in Paris and followed his period there by spending time in the South of France studying fresco and mural painting.

On his return to England he rented studios in Manresa Road, Chelsea which he shared with Nelson Dawson and from where he sent work to the Royal Society of British Artists. By 1890 he had returned to Scarborough, living at 8 West Bank, Seamer Road. It was from there that he mixed socially and professionally with the Staithes Group, becoming a founder member of the Staithes Art Club in 1901.

His love and understanding of the sea and ships was such that he not only chose to become a professional marine painter but also a professional model maker of ships. Each of the two activities doubtless helped to make him more proficient at both. His work is outstanding, especially during the period up to the First World War. He is able to make the viewer feel part of the scene; one can imagine C.S. Lewis looking at a picture by Dade before writing the passage in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where children found themselves literally absorbed into
a painting of a ship at sea.

It was during this time that Dade visited Holland and affected the use of ‘Ernst’ as his Christian name rather than Ernest. His later work feels more detached and
illustrative.

In addition to the RBA Dade also exhibited at the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy, the Royal Cambrian Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Staithes Art Club. He has work in the
collections of the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, and Rotherham, Scarborough, and Whitby public galleries and the Victorian and
Albert Museum.


© Rosamund Jordan 2003