Rescuedfrom a dilapidated studio and an unsympathetic landlord,  the works exhibited at Lauderdale House last August comprised a posthumous retrospective curated by Dr Oliver Eade in order of his late father,  Edward.   It took two years to clean away the thick film of grime and dust,  and to restore and frame the surviving paintings and sculptures,  but it has been worth it.   The success of the exhibition has spurred the retiring,  unconfident artist's family to try to achieve for him posthumously the recognition that alluded him in his lifetime.

A visitor's comment that his work seemed 'so gentle when there is so much unpleasantness and violence in the world' prompted a second exhibition to be held in Edinburgh,  October 2001 in aid of Amnesty International.  And now along with prints and postcards limited first bronze castings of four of the sculptures of Eddy Eade,  a pupil of Henry Moore and described by Professor Carel Weight of the Royal College of Art as "one of the best draughtsmen in the country",  are being offered for sale by his son.

Born in 1911 into a working class family in north London,  Eade's doting mother quickly recognized his talents and encouraged him to take up a career in art.    However,  after studying at the Slade and Royal Academy schools he eeked out a living teaching.  With his wife Phyllis,  a former pupil,  he lived in Aberdare Gardens,  near Swiss Cottage but died in 1984,  never having managed to capitalise on his obvious promise.

Described as being "taken with the ever changing effects of light"  the works on show indicated that Eade's influences clearly extended far beyond mere impressionism.  A natural assimilator of style and technique his magpie nature drew him irresistibly toward the shining lights of modernism - Van Gogh,  Rodin,  Picasso,  Matisse,  Derain and Moore.  Vincent's spirit is evoked each time Eade's loaded palette knife carves the twin disks of sun and moon in rich oily ridges and his gnarled Portrait of an old man,  with its clotted daubs of pigment,  is an obvious homage to the Dutchman's Potato Eaters.  The flattening of space and the distillation of complex shapes into simplified areas of colour and pattern in Eade's Cat on a sofa maybe distinctly "Japanese" but the painting takes its cue from Bonnard rather than Hokusai.

The literature accompanying the exhibition hinted at Eade's troubled psyche,  referring obliquely to a "over powering mother" and "occasionally violent father" and indeed there is an unquestionably neurotic quality to Eade's work;  in the quietly desperate transformation of a mundane Hampstead Scene into some Parisian backwater as rendered by Utrillo;  in the implicit threat of the vast parrots which loom from their perch above a lost looking child (The Parrot House) and in the shear intensity of his Portrait of Phyllis,  who stares back from the canvas cautiously,  her face an anxious,  candle-lit mask.

An early Self-Portrait  hints at Eade's insecure disposition.  The young artist stands before us,  brush in hand,  a gauche,  diffident figure picked out in stuttering,  broken brush strokes of blue and reddish ochre.  A faded photograph taken years later reinforces the impression;  stung by the church's rejection of his Seated Christ,  Eade stands protectively beside his  Mother and Child  sculpture,  tense and drawn.

Eade's art never atrophies in a "mature" style;  on the contrary,  his surviving paintings are the evidence of a constant struggle - with the subject,  with the medium of paint,  and ultimately, perhaps,  with himself.  Paradoxically,  the work derives its strength from its very lack of certainty.

The abiding impression is one of a peripheral,  quiet subversive figure with odds with bourgeois London,  a displaced personality out of time and out of sync with his surroundings.  He cannot perhaps be described as a ground breaking or innovative talent,  but through this collection,  this enigmatic artist's honesty,  integrity,  and sincerity of purpose shine through.  His family should be applauded for their efforts to amass and restore his paintings and sculptures.  They hope,  ultimately,  to have a permanent exhibition in northwest London,  so they others may view and enjoy what remains of Edward Eade's works.