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Life
| 1822-1900; son of W. F. Wakeman, bookseller (from Nottingham); joined Petrie’s department of the Ordance Commission as a draughtsman; travelled with John O’Donovan in Clare and other counties; made woodcuts to illustrate Petrie’s Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland (1845) lived in Dominick St., Dublin, before moving to London and returning to take position as art master at St. Columba’s School, Co. Meath; issued Archaelogia Hibernica: a Handbook of Irish Antiquities, Pagan and Christian (1858; enl. 1891; 3rd edn. 1903); contrib. to journal of Royal Historical and Archael. Assoc. of Ireland; also illustreated Ireland, Its Character and Scenery by Mrs and Mrs Hall (1841); wrote and illustrated guides to the Shannon, Lough Erne, Dublin and Ireland |
| moved to Portora College, Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh), when St. Columba’a moved to Rathfarnham; settled briefly in Ballycastle when art-teaching tried in Portora; returned to Dublin in 1884 and contrib. series to Irish newspapers (e,g., Evening Telegraph, Freeman’s Journal) - including his Gravles and monuments of also issued Graves and Monuments of Illustrious Irishmen (1887); elected. member RHAAI, 1868 and served as Gen. Sec. of same in 1888; illustrated William Wood-Martin’s Lake Dwellings of Ireland (1886) and half the plates in Sir William Wilde’s Catalogues of Antiquities in the Museum of the RIA (1857 & 1861); provided 200 ills. for John O’Hanlon’s Lives of the Irish Saints (10 vols., 1875- ); |
| in 1888 he wrote a “Statement of services to Irish archaeology” (1888), in order to elicit support at a time of hardship in his often-unrelaible profession, with new methods of illustration fast encroaching; d. Oct. 1900, at his daughter’s home in Coleraine, Co. Londonderry; bur. Portrush, Co. Antrim, with a Celtic Cross on his grave; his son Gerald continued to illustrate Wood-Martin’s books. RIA |
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Works
Graves and Monuments of Illustrious Irishmen (Dublin: The Freeman’s Journal, Ltd., printers [1887]), [1-5] 6-36pp. [2], ill.; 22cm. [tombs of Tone, Emmet, JP Curran; O’Connell Monument
...]; printed as series in the Freeman’ Journal [NLI - cf. ref. to Evening Telegraph in Dictionary of Irish Biography. (RIA 2009).
Criticism
See entry by Fionnula Carson Williams, in Dictionary of Irish Biograpy (RIA 2009) - online; accessed 04.10.2024.)
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