Unexpected Eardley
Alice Strang
The celebrations of Joan Eardley’s centenary have prompted people to wonder where they can see her work: the answer is in unexpected places, from a grammar school to a former abbey As revealed by a search of the Art UK website, works by Joan Eardley can be found in 36 public collections across the United Kingdom. These works and their acquisition stories have been highlighted in a new Art UK curation, ‘From the Highlands to Hampshire: Collecting Joan Eardley’, pulled together by the 36 curators responsible for them and in a specially devised map (though it’s worth checking before arrival that your local Eardley is on display). Many of her works on paper are also in the public realm, but are not yet all on Art UK. As a result of this project, it was revealed that Eardley’s ‘Little Girl with a Piece’ (1959) is hanging in Campbeltown Grammar School on the Kintyre Peninsula. It is part of the Argyll Collection, formed between 1960 and 1990 and consisting of 173 works of art. It was established by the author and activist Naomi Mitchison and the art adviser Jim Tyre so young people in Argyll and Bute could experience fine art at first hand, in an area with few museums and galleries. ‘Little Girl with a Piece’ is a good example of the work which Eardley made in the Townhead district of Glasgow, where she had a studio from 1952. She was drawn to the vibrancy of the area and its close-knit community and was a regular sight sketching street scenes. The antics of the local children, as they played, squabbled and otherwise passed the time were captured in im-
ages executed at speed, some of which were later realised in more fully worked paintings. In this image, a girl is seen absorbed in reading a comic, while holding a ‘piece’ – or sandwich – in her hand. It was acquired for the Argyll Collection in 1964, the year after Eardley’s death.
‘She was drawn to the vibrancy of the area and its close-knit community and was a regular sight sketching street scenes’
Regional collections where Eardley is represented include those in Coventry, Kettering, Reading and Rugby. Huddersfield Art Gallery, part of Kirklees Museums & Galleries, is home to her ‘Children and Chalked Wall No. 4’ (c.1963). It comes from a celebrated series of paintings in which pairs of children are shown in front of a graffitied wall below the artist’s Townhead
studio. The sitters’ comfortable familiarity is clear in their informal pose, while Eardley’s collaging of newsprint onto her board support reflects the freedom of expression and technique of the original graffiti. Huddersfield’s acquisition was made by Philip James of the Arts Council and Museums Association, from Eardley’s last life-time solo exhibition, held at Roland, Browse & Delbanco in London in 1963. He wrote: ‘I have today bought a picture . . . by Joan Eardley. Although the show is only a week old, practically everything has gone – purchases made by the Arts Council, Contemporary Art Society, Birmingham, Nat. Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and Kendal, Abbot Hall. I have bought no. 13 in the catalogue. The price was 175 guineas and have got it for 150.’ Meanwhile, in Trinity College at Oxford University, Eardley’s ‘Townhead Close’ (c.1955) can be found hanging in a tutor’s room. It was purchased by a group of students who formed a subscription art collective in order to purchase modern paintings and prints; acquisitions were duly swapped between their rooms each term. This work was purchased for £26 from St George’s Gallery, London, in 1955, who that year mounted Eardley’s first solo exhibition in the capital. A cluster of young children are depicted within and beside a ‘close’ entrance, the entry to a tenement
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