On Thursday afternoon we went to Edinburgh to visit the Scottish artist Joan Eardley’s exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery 2 Sadly this exhibition isn’t free, I think it cost £9 but we became ‘friends’ of the galleries which is well worth the money if you enjoy visiting art exhibitions. Firstly we parked the car at the wrong gallery and had to walk across the road to Gallery 2. Then when we did get there I was quite disappointed because there was just one small room with her Glasgow children paintings on display and I nearly left a comment saying I was disappointed that it was so small. Just as well I didn’t as it turned out that there are four more rooms full of her work upstairs. lots of them are landscapes of the wee village of Catterline that she stayed in for years, travelling between her cottage there and her studio in Glasgow. Catterline is north east of Aberdeen, and in the 1950s when she was painting there they still had a small salmon fishing business going on. She bought a cottage there for £30, it had no running water or anything but even so, I wonder how much those cottages cost nowadays!
It’s fair to say that Eardley’s paintings of the Samson children who lived in a flat beneath her studio in Glasgow are not things of beauty. They were living in abject poverty – a family of twelve children who were all models for Eardley, but when you see the actual paintings you see the detail in the background and she captured the essence of a time and place that no longer exists. There are three short films in the exhibition too where you can see her at work and old Glasgow of the 1950s in a film about renewal plans.
The Catterline paintings were my favourites though and there were a couple that I would happily have hung on walls in my home. Unfortunately as usual the gallery shop didn’t have any prints of my favourites.
The exhibition also has a lot of photographs of the Samson children and letters from the artist to friends and her sister. It’s so sad that she died of breast caner when she was only 42, especially as one of the letters says that she is going to the doctor because her bosom was giving her such a lot of pain. Obviously she should have gone to the doctor a lot earlier than she did.
If you’re interested in seeing images of her artwork have a look here.
You can see images of Catterline here.
I’d never heard of this artist, but her artwork is very compelling. I can see why you would have wanted some prints….
Paula
Paula,
I loved that snowy landscape and she liked painting the margins of fields where the wild flowers grew in the unfarmed land on the edges. I’m running out of wall space to hang anything else anyway!
I had not heard of Joan Eardley but can see that she should be regarded as an important artist.
I like the way she encapsulates the energy and force of the sea in her depictions of waves; the delicate details of frail plants in the pastoral pictures; the honesty of the portraits of the children – lean, skinny legs and all as many kiddies had back then.
She was truly talented and it was sad her career was to be so brief.
Valerie,
She really captured that era and I think she loved those children too, they probably needed another adult in their lives as their parents won’t have had much time for them all I’m sure!
It was very sad that she died so young and I noticed that her sister outlived her by more than 25 years.
Thank you for introducing me to this artist, Katrina. Wonderful evocative paintings, and she seems equally good with landscapes and people. I wonder what happened to those children as they grew up.
Sandra,
I wonder that too but there didn’t seem to be any information on them. With 12 of them I bet the parents were glad to get rid of a few of them for a while as they were posing! I must admit I prefer the landscapes.
I have never heard of her before so I clicked to look at her work. Wow! Very powerful. The exhibit must have been great to see!
Stefanie,
It is great, and has obviously been popular as there were quite a lot of people there. We’re definitely going up to Catterline to see the places she painted – sometime.