Obituaries

JOHN BREAKEY SRUA 1932 – 2024: “A Painterly Lithographer”

John Breakey was one of those rare unique artists, being both an accomplished painter and a renowned print-maker.

Born 1932 in Belfast, John studied drawing and painting under the tutelage of Tom Carr RUA (1909-1999) at Belfast College of Art (1953-58).  The following year John was fortunate to study at The Slade School of Art in London (1958-60) at a time when lithography was increasingly being taught at art schools, more as a Fine Art discipline by painters such as Ceri Richards, John Piper and William Scott. Ex-Slade student, Stanley Jones (1933-2023) appointed in 1958 as Master Printer at the newly established Curwen Studio, introduced artists and Slade students to a more experimental, painterly approach to lithography.  

In that spirit, John Breakey developed his own way of working to make prints that evolved from direct interaction on stone - painting, splashing and layering colour from multiple stones to print lithographs of intense vitality. Rooted in the landscape of County Down and more specifically that of the Mournes where he worked at Carnacaville Studio, his lithographs explore the abstract qualities of views seen through dry stone walls and thickets of gorse, heather and grass.  Where figures appear, if at all, they are fully integrated into the landscape as in his RUA Diploma work Figures Fused in a Landscape. Creating a dialogue between oil on canvas and ink on paper, his lithographs stand out as strong independent visual statements that few other artists have been able to achieve.

Lithography is a physically demanding discipline and in recent years Breakey returned to painting large scale oils such as That Cold Crisp Day at the Beach, where he revisited the abstracted patterns of his immediate locale, expressed in layers of rich, vibrant colours paralleling his printing technique.

First exhibiting with the Royal Ulster Academy when he was just 16, John Breakey’s career was long and distinguished, exhibiting widely as an independent artist and in group shows across Ireland and the UK. His work is represented in collections at the Ulster Museum, the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities and at the Irish National Self Portrait Collection, Limerick. At his studio, he also worked with a number of artists, printing for David Crone, Neil Shawcross, Malcolm Bennett and Paul Croft.

Ever curious about the magical alchemy of printing from stone, major awards and travel grants from Down District Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland enabled him to seek out stones drawn by Toulouse Lautrec held in the basement of the Louvre, and to take up a place on the Professional Printer Training Programme at the world renowned Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque in 1990.

John’s contribution to British and Irish lithography and painting – very much as a “painterly lithographer” cannot be underestimated.

Amanda Croft MA ADE (Keeper, RUA Diploma Collection)      

Paul Croft TMP RE RCA

Brian Garrett HRUA 1938 - 2023    by Erskine Holmes

When I look back on 2023, I remember my friend, the lawyer and Labour activist Brian Garrett.

On Monday November 13 family, friends and comrades brought Brian back to Ballynafeigh for his funeral service in St Jude’s Church of Ireland.

A packed church heard of an outstanding student going up to Queen’s University 1958 to study law and the stellar legal career which followed. However in a very real sense we knew the boy and the man never left his roots in the mixed working class community of Raby St and the Ormeau Road.

He remained a life long member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and UK Labour Party Northern Ireland (UKLPNI) and never forgot his roots in a ‘mixed’ community. My own roots are in the same community and I contested Ballynafeigh in 1965 Stormont election.

At Queen’s in 1958 there was a rite of passage for centre-left students, marching to Aldermaston with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). He told me of standing at the rally with his life long friend Ian J Hill listening to Michael Foot and Kenneth Tynan. I had my rite of passage at Aldermaston in 1960 and went on to set up Queen’s CND.

Our paths never really diverged but sometimes I was unaware of events he had taken part in. One was the founding meeting of Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in the International Hotel 1967. That was the one Gerry Adams records that the republicans were there with instructions to vote for the communists. Brian was there with Cedric Thornberry National Council for Civil Liberties (father of Emily Thornberry). who was also a members of the Labour Lawyers.

Brian suspected that there was a republican strategy at the meeting but Cedric did not seem concerned. Brian supported my role in NICRA and never mentioned his suspicions until years later. In 1972 we worked together the Darlington Conference which was boycotted by John Hume and SDLP so doomed to failure.

Then in 1973 after Sunningdale came the watershed of the Ulster Workers Council strike. I understand Brian as NILP chairman was approached by Harry Murray, before the paramilitaries took control to act a backchannel to civil servants. Brian’s approaches were repulsed with “tell them to go back to work”. Same civil servant ended up negotiating the Belfast Agreement.

Brian was culturally British and Irish. All island co-operation was his aspiration. He served on the Council of Labour in Ireland 1968-71. He worked closely with Conor Cruise O'Brien and served as president of The Irish Association. His service to the arts, Royal Ulster Academy (RUA), Ulster Orchestra, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Lyric Theatre are some examples but he was probably proudest of his work with James Ellis and Martin Lynch as he acted as literary executor for Sam Thompson.

He was especially proud when Over the Bridge was put on in London 2013. Among his many positions he was an arbitrator and he was instrumental in ensuring that NI remained in the 1996 Arbitration Act.

His work with All Children Together ensured that funding which properly for Integrated Education was released by officials reluctant to apply it. Brian was a key advisor for Mike Nesbitt’s defamation bill from 2013 until it became The Act in 2022. 

He was a pro bono lawyer on a scale we can only guess at. As well as working in a busy commercial practice he was a Deputy County Court Judge until 2010.

Erskine Holmes, Belfast

Image Courtesy of ©Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives (MS2001-039), John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Robert Lee-Wade (Bottom) SRUA 

Robert Bottom, later Robert Lee-Wade, was born in Cambridge in 1944. He was a pupil at the Perse School until his early teens, when the family moved to Beckenham in Kent. After suffering a burst appendix, he needed a long period off school, and spent the time drawing and painting.  This awoke his passion for art.  Although his parents weren’t keen, he was determined to go to art school, but compromised by training as a teacher as well. He studied at colleges in Folkestone and Canterbury.

Robert then went on to study at film school in Newport, and afterwards spent a few years living in London, working on various television productions, including the drama series ‘The Frighteners’. He always looked back to his career in television with great fondness. Later in his twenties, he married a young woman from Northern Ireland, and they chose to move back to her native country, where he opted for a steadier career as head of the art department at Campbell College, a private boys’ school.  Among his teaching successes there was Gareth Reid who he taught for A Level Art. Gareth recently became not only Portrait Artist of the Year on Sky Arts, but its Portrait Artist of the Decade too!

During this period his two children, Tristan and Megan, were born. Although living in Belfast was sometimes a challenge in the period of the Troubles, Robert was able to explore the wild Irish landscapes in areas like Donegal, which proved a lasting inspiration for his painting. He took early retirement at the age of 50, giving him more time to work on his own paintings, which he was already exhibiting very successfully. He also had the idea of applying to be an ‘artist on cruise ships’ something new to the cruise companies. The director of Voyages of Discovery was delighted with the idea, and Robert became their first artist-in-residence. He travelled on many cruises around the Baltic and Mediterranean, teaching art classes and demonstrating his work. By then, Robert was an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy, and became its vice president in the early 2000s.

When Robert met Cherry Gilchrist, a writer and fellow guest lecturer on board ship in 2006, he was by then a widower. He subsequently moved back to England and married Cherry, in 2009, when they both took the surname Lee-Wade, one name from each side of the family. They lived in both Gloucestershire and Devon over the years, and also journeyed on a few more cruises together as guest lecturers to exotic destinations, including Easter Island, Peru, Bali and Myanmar. Robert then helped to co-run painting holidays in Morocco with his artist colleague Colin Watson. Robert became ill at the start of 2024. His health had been problematic for several years, and very sadly, he died in August 2024 of complications following a kidney operation.

His art can be viewed on his website at www.robertleewade.co.uk

Written by his wife, Cherry Lee-Wade (Gilchrist)

Andrew Crockart HRUA

Poet Michael Longley has paid an emotional tribute to pioneering TV producer Andy Crockart at his funeral. Mr. Crockart, who died last week in hospital in his late 80s, made groundbreaking programmes about victims of the Troubles and about Mother Teresa’s peace mission in Northern Ireland.

He was a cornerstone of UTV for decades, working as a producer of the fondly remembered children’s show Romper Room, as well as early news bulletins. Mr. Crockart, who moved from the BBC to become a floor manager in UTV in the 60s, also helped make household names of presenters such as Tommy James and James Boyce.

The producer, who lived in Groomsport, once said his passion was for making programmes which helped Protestants and Catholics "get to know each other better".

At a service at Roselawn Crematorium, The Rev Robin Roddie, who worked with Mr. Crockart as an advisor on religious programming, said he moved easily amongst cardinals, bishops and saints.

That was a reference to his film with Mother Teresa, who in the 1970s set up a base with other nuns in Ballymurphy but departed 18 months later amid claims they had been driven out by the Catholic Church.

"It was Andy with his tremendous sense of fun who devised the anagram for the chairman of our religious advisory panel as CRAP," said Mr. Roddie.

Mr. Crockart’s son Patrick told mourners that his father was a storyteller, art collector, writer, model maker, steam train builder, woodworker and jazz and Irish traditional music lover who also had expert knowledge of the workings of all kinds of engines.

Close friend Mr. Longley read a number of his poems in tribute to the “magic of this hugely charming, warm-hearted and deep-souled man”.

He thanked Mr. Crockart for “all his fine TV work including a profound and essential programme”

broadcast from Tullamore in Co. Offaly which brought together people who had been maimed or bereaved in the Troubles.

One of the Poems Mr. Longley read before leading mourners in a round of applause for Mr. Crockart was All These People, which remembers the normal people killed in the violence.

Among the mourners were former UTV presenters Gerry Kelly, Jeanie Johnston, and Adrienne Catherwood, who as Miss Adrienne fronted the Romper Room shows in the sixties.

Former priest Denis Bradley was also there, as was the ex-managing Director of UTV Desmond Smyth.

Ivan Little 25^th August 2024

Sunday Life

Image Courtesy

 of Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives (MS2001-039), John J. Burns Library, Boston College.