Joan Eardley, RSA 1921-1963

STRUCTURE The colours are vivid and there are no signs of fading or staining. The structure of the sheet is sound though undulates slightly and has some very light creasing towards the lower edge. There is a fine diaganol tear to the upper right corner (approx. 3cm). This is only visible upon close inspection. FRAME Held under glass in a white painted wooden frame.
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Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley, was born in the rural village of Warnham in Sussex where her father was a farmer on 18 May 1921. When her father joined the Ministry for Agriculture in 1926, the Eardley's moved to London and tragically he died only two years after their move. Joan's talent was recognised in her childhood at school in Blackheath and she wanted nothing more than to become an artist. The Eardley's moved to Glasgow in 1939 and Joan was enrolled in the Glasgow School of Art, which she attended from January 1940 until June 1943. Her teacher Hugh Adam Crawford recalled his young student with affection and high regard, stating that 'her application was constant, intense and serious' (Joan Eardley R.S.A., (1921-1963) A Memorial Exhibition, exhibition catalogue for The Scottish Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1964, p. 4).

WWII prevented Joan from taking the Post-diploma Scholarship awarded in 1943 and with typical resilience she worked as a joiner's labourer for two years. Although she continued to paint, particularly in Corrie and Arran it was not until 1943 that she threw herself whole heartedly back into painting, by attending the Patrick Allan-Frazer School of Art near Arbroath. Five years later she became a professional member of the Society of Scottish Artists and also returned to the Glasgow School of Art to take the postponed Post-diploma Scholarship. She was awarded two travel scholarships and was subsequently abroad for eight months, in Florence, Assisi, Siena, Venice and Rome. When she returned to Glasgow, she reaffirmed her close connection with the city by exhibiting her scholarship work at the School of Art where she taught for two evenings every week. She took a studio in Cochrane Street near City Chambers and later moved to an old photographer's studio at 204 St James's Road in a district called Townhead which has now largely been swept away by the redevelopments of the 1960s and 1970s. The pictures she painted in Glasgow capture, in her own words 'the character of Glasgow [which] lies in its back street which are for me pictorially exciting. There is no social or political impetus behind my paintings of that part of Glasgow, as is sometimes suggested. The back streets mean almost entirely screaming, playing children - all over the streets - and only in the shadows of doorways groups of women, and at street corners groups of men, but always chiefly children and the noise of children.' (ibid, Arts Council of Great Britain, p. 7)

The Green Scarf may depict one of the Samson children, the little Glaswegian models that posed for many of Eardley's drawings. Eardley began this series of drawings around the time she moved into a new studio above a corner shop on St. James's Road in Townhead; 'Foremerly a photographer's studio, it was brightly lit, with a glass roof, unbearably hot in summer and ice-cold in winter but, as a painter's studio, it was perfect. Better still, it was plumb in the middle of a teeming community, with street kids constantly under foot, playing their seasonal games, the boys planning and wreaking mischief and the older girls, as always, minding their younger brothers and sisters. Joan and her studio became the ntaural focus for those children.' (Cordelia Oliver, Joan Eardley, RSA, 1988, p. 46)