When I first started blogging on www.gailsibley.com, I wrote a post about an artist I had recently discovered – Joan Eardley (1921-1963). I was blown away by her work and still am. Recently I borrowed a book on the artist via interlibrary loan. I could only keep the book for two weeks and I knew pretty quickly that really, I needed my own copy. So I treated myself! The book, Joan Eardley by Christopher Andreae, has arrived and now I want to share with you some of Joan Eardley’s powerful pastels reproduced in the book.
Born in Sussex in 1921 to an English father and a Scottish mother, Joan spent her childhood in England but lived most of the remainder of her life in Scotland after the family moved there to escape the bombing in London in WWII. (Her father had taken his life earlier; he never got over being gassed in the trenches during the First World War.) In 1940, Joan enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
After her successful studies (she won a prize for her one and only self-portrait), war work with a boat builder, further studies at GSA followed by a trip to Italy on a travelling scholarship, Joan set up a studio in the tenement area of Glasgow in 1949. There she painted the local children. It was her drawings and paintings of these slum children that brought her recognition initially even though it is the work of wind and sea from her Catterline studio for she is most well-known. Below are a few of the pastels she created of the tenement kids she came to know.
Eardley continued to paint children throughout her life (which was sadly cut short by cancer in 1963 when she was only 42 years old). In a BBC interview in January 1963, she said, “…the [children] that I want to paint I try to get them to stay still but it’s not really possible to get a child to stay very still –mostly I just watch them moving about, and do the best I can.” (pg19-20)
You can see her sympathy for these children of poverty. Yet there’s certainly no sentimentality evident. She paints them as she sees them, all grubby and yet with the charm of children.
You can feel the individuality of these children – they aren’t just a ‘type’. The more I look at this work, the more I feel that.
I like what Andreae says about these portraits: “…the Glasgow slum children. They are portraits not caricatures. She had too much rapport with them for such distortion. And direct, daily experience of them meant she knew them well and painted them in their world….They were..impoverished tenement children, and Joan studied and explored their community and their place in it with great concentration and poignancy. Nor for the most part, did she let sentimentalism sift sugar over her understanding of these kids. She knowingly celebrated the vibrant character of their burstingly energetic existence. She portrayed them with a kind of fond and tough sense of reality.” (p.127)
And just to situate where these kids lived and where Eardley worked:
When I started this post, I was going to also include images of Eardley’s pastels of Catterline landscapes but I think I will leave those for another time.
To see more wonderful photographs of Joan Eardley, at work and in her milieu, click here then open the pdf. Also, to see a large selection of Eardley’s oil paintings, click here.
What do you think of Eardley’s portrayals of the Glasgow slum children? Are you as taken with the directness and energetic interpretation in pastel as I am?
As always, I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time, keep pastelling!
~ Gail
PS. The FABULOUS book I reference:
To buy in Canada click on image:
To buy in USA and international, click on image:
14 thoughts on “Joan Eardley – Her Pastels Of Glasgow Tenement Kids”
I love how her style seems so loose, yet with a few strokes and what look like very rough sketch lines, she does suggest the emotion and energy of the kids so well.
You are so right Cristel!! Thanks for commenting 🙂
Speechless! I was getting emotional, then I saw the last child in orange, and she made me smile.
Casey, I put that girl in the orange jumper in at the last minute as she too made me smile 🙂 Needed the lightness after all the others!
This artist is special she conveys to me her love of children just as they are full of energy laughing bright spirits could look all day and still find things to see and feel an excellent choice cant stop looking at that photo of three children in a window each quite different. The way she conveys eyes is different but very expressive. Much a-appreciated S.
Hi Gail,
THANK you!!! for this referral to such a fantastic Scottish artist.
It made me look more into it and under publications on the Scottish National Gallery’s website I noticed another great artist,
I am sure you would like, George Devlin, take a look at his way of painting water, the sea, living myself at the sea I feel his way of seeing it.
Susana
Hi Gail, You really hit the jackpot with Joan Eardley. I really appreciate your sharing this wonderful artist with your readers. Besides adoring her work, it gave me a grave view of Scotland where my mother’s paternal family lived (and left). Somehow I had idealized the place but now I feel a greater “knowing” of what life was like there. I guess it was typical of all of Europe where the rich owned everything and the poor none. Very sad. Again, thanks for sharing.
Wow. I want to thank you for that last newsletter. LOVE the work and have now ordered the book for myself (and my students!)
Awesome! Diane, wait until you see the book!!! Her work is amazing. I just gave you a wee pastel taster in my post.
Thanks for writing and letting me know.
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Hi Gail
You may recall from your last post on Joan Eardley I replied that we are fortunate to have as a friend, Jim Black, who’s mother was Pat Black, Joan’s sister. Pat gifted more than 250 photos and drawings by Joan to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, back in 1987.
Jim recently returned home to Western Australia, after visiting relatives in Scotland and you may be interested to know that he brought us back a wonderful book on his Aunty, entitled ‘Joan Eardley; A sense of place’, published by the National Gallery of Scotland (2016). Proceeds from the sales of this book go towards supporting the National Galleries of Scotland. The ISBN No. is 978 1 911054 02 3.
Can’t tell you the cost as it was a gift from Jim.
Regards
John
Hi John, Yes, I do recall. It was wonderful of Pat to gift Joan’s drawings and photos to the Scottish National Gallery.
Thank you for the book recommendation. Happily it’s already on my bookshelf waiting for me to get into (my reward for when I complete the project I am working on for DK publishers)!! I pre-ordered it as soon as I heard about it. Now if only I could get to the actual exhibition which goes until May 2017….
Hi Gail
Glad you already have the book. To be honest, I didn’t know of it until Jim brought a copy back from his trip.:-)
Regards
John