Details

Name

Joan Eardley

Brief Biography

1921 - 1963, British / Scottish

Occupation

Artist

Description

Eardley was one of the most important artists working in post-war Scotland. Born in Warnham, West Sussex, where her parents were dairy farmers, she had strong connections with Glasgow. Her mother Irene Morrison was from the city and had met her father Captain William Eardley while he was billeted at Maryhill Barracks during World War I. He was gassed in the war and committed suicide in 1929 after the collapse of their dairy business and struggles with depression. Eardley too was to suffer from depression throughout her life. In 1926 Eardley, her mother and younger sister Patricia moved to London to live with her maternal grandmother and great aunt in Blackheath, a supportive, all-female environment.

Eardley studied for a short period at Goldsmith’s College of Art in London, but when war broke out the family moved to Auchterarder in Perthshire, before settling in Bearsden, to the north west of Glasgow. From 1940 she studied at Glasgow School of Art under Hugh Adam Crawford, where she won the James Guthrie Prize for portraiture, gaining her Diploma in 1943. There she met Margot Sandeman with whom she formed a close friendship, often painting together, particularly at the village of Corrie on Arran. The war interrupted her art studies and she spend some time at Jordanhill College of Education in Glasgow but then opted to work as a joiner’s labourer for a local boatbuilder, where she helped paint camouflage on boats.

After the war, Eardley spent time in Lincolnshire and London, before taking up a postgraduate summer school residency in 1947 at the Patrick Allan-Fraser School of Art at Hospitalfield House, near Arbroath, then under the tutorship of James Cowie. Here she met Angus Neil who became an important life-long friend. She returned to Glasgow School of Art in 1947–48 to take up her postponed post-diploma studies. A travelling scholarship from GSA and a Carnegie scholarship from the Royal Scottish Academy enabled her to travel in 1948–49 to France and Italy where she encountered many influential artworks by both modern and old masters and produced drawings of the Italian landscape, architecture and people. Back in Glasgow in May 1949 she rented an attic studio at 21 Cochrane Street, near the City Chambers and taught evening classes at GSA. In 1952 she moved to an old photographer’s studio at 204 St James Road in Townhead, in the east end of the city. There she found inspiration in community life around her and painted the local children.

In 1951 Eardley was introduced to the tiny fishing village of Catterline on the north-east coast of Scotland. From 1954 her time was divided between Glasgow and Catterline but gradually more of each year was spent at the latter where she painted the fields and haystacks behind the village, nets drying on the beach and Makin Green but predominantly the sea.

Eardley died of cancer at Killearn Hospital on 16 August 1963 at the age of 42, the same year she was elected a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy. Although she was beginning to get critical attention in the art world with single artist shows at St George's Gallery in London in 1955, the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh in 1961 and at Roland, Browse and Delbanco in London in May 1963, her early death meant that she didn’t get the international recognition that she deserved. In 1964 there was a memorial exhibition of her work held at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.