Margot Sandeman

day. Her ability to capture age through posture is evident in this work. There is a real weight denoted in the coat of the stooped figure in the foreground as they clutch the edges of the coat to make it meet. This composition is then further worked up into colour in the second chalk and pastel study of ‘Covered Market’ with a predominant yellow being taken through the awnings of the stalls and replacing the cobbles of the passage, set against contrasting colder blue tones of the stalls’ interiors. It is worthwhile noting that in the ink study there is perhaps an early indication of Eardley’s fascination with signage, seen in later works such as ‘Sweet Shop, Rottenrow’ (c.1960–61), described by Edwin Morgan in his 1962 poem ‘To Joan Eardley’, as ‘Pale yellow letters / humbly struggling across / The once brilliant red / of a broken shop-face / C O N F E C T I O’. In ‘Covered Market’, the sign on the end of one of the market carts reads ‘Bush’s Nurseryman. Roots. Cut Flowers.’ The life drawings by Eardley in the school’s collection represent the rigour of drawing instruction during her period as a student at GSA. Figures twist, with Eardley following with a second observational detail of a foreshortened arm on the same page, to better understand form, in ‘Life Drawing’ (1940–45). This academic understanding of the figure as an exercise, of how skin and clothes cover skeletal structure, underpins her ability to capture the figure quickly and authentically in her work. The Glasgow School of Art is integral to Joan Eardley’s story. Her close-knit network of friends and supporters, which would sustain her personally and professionally throughout her life, were formed as a student in the 1940s. A younger classmate, Cordelia Oliver, would go on to become one of her fiercest supporters, writing the first book-length critical biography of the artist in 1988 and mounting several major posthumous exhibitions of her work. Her close friend and early collaborator, Margot Sandeman, was also a fellow classmate and lifelong advocate of her work. Eardley’s early career was intrinsically linked with her primary place of education, from her diploma between 1940–43 and her post-diploma year in 1948, to attendance at evening classes in between. From her Guthrie prize-winning self-portrait in 1943, now held by National Galleries of Scotland, to her first solo exhibition in 1949, Glasgow School of Art is an entirely fitting venue for this special exhibition of works on paper in her centenary year.

5

Susannah Thompson is an art historian and critic. She is head of doctoral studies and professor of contemporary art and criticism at The Glasgow School of Art

Jenny Brownrigg is a curator and writer. She is exhibitions director and a researcher at The Glasgow School of Art

Early Eardley: Joan Eardley in the 1940s

Autumn / Winter 2021, dates tbc Glasgow School of Art, 167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow, G3 6RQ T: (0)141 353 4500 | gsa.ac.uk

1 Joan Eardley, Life Drawing, (Study of male model, possibly from Glasgow School of Art life class), c. 1940-1945.

2 Joan Eardley, Mule with Cart, 1948-1949

3

Joan Eardley, Italian Farmhouse, 1948-1949

4

Joan Eardley, Church interior, Basilica di San Marco, 1948-1949 (2-4 undertaken as part of Eardley’s art school travelling scholarship.)

5 Joan Eardley, Covered Market, Glasgow, c. 1945-1949 All images courtesy of Glasgow School of Art. © Joan Eardley Estate

A LIFE IN CATTERLINE

1

Patrick Elliott, chief curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Galleries of Scotland, discusses his forthcoming book, Joan Eardley: Land & Sea – A Life in Catterline

Five years ago, we staged the show Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It focused on the work Eardley did in the Townhead area of Glasgow, among the crumbling, overcrowded Victorian tenements, and in Catterline, the tiny fishing village on the north-east coast, where she made her home. The Glasgow work focuses on the poor children who scampered about her studio and became her favourite subjects, while the Catterline pictures are almost devoid of human presence. Yet there was a strong connection between the two places. They were both tight-knit communities confronting an uncertain future. Townhead faced the developer’s wrecking ball and a 1960s motorway interchange. In Catterline, the young had left and many of the little cottages were uninhabited with no mains water or electricity. When you organise a show, you always come across information when it’s too late. I met Ron Stephen by chance, not long before our show opened. He was in the audience of a play about Eardley and politely pointed out that a few things weren’t quite right. Everyone turned round. He knew because he had been there. He and his dad had collected Eardley from Stonehaven train station when she first came to stay in the village in 1952. I went up to Catterline a couple of times with Ron. He could point to the exact spots where Eardley had painted many of her pictures and could tell, by the position of the sun, what time of day it must have been, or by the position of the boats and the nets, what season it was. This was gold, but in order to balance the Glasgow and Catterline narratives in the show and catalogue, we had to leave much of this information aside. We’ve exchanged hundreds of emails and phone calls since. The idea of publishing a book specifically on Eardley and Catterline, to coincide with Eardley’s centenary in May 2021, emerged at that time. The Covid-19 pandemic has delayed publication a bit, but it will appear soon. While A Sense of Place was on display, we had some lucky breaks. I met Jonathan Stansfeld, who had run the salmon fishing industry along that stretch of the east coast from the late 1950s onwards. Salmon fishing was central to the economy of the village. The nets you see in Eardley’s Catterline paintings are salmon nets, but one looks at them almost as compositional devices. Mr Stansfeld explained everything you could want to know about salmon and more: if a painting shows the nets hanging up on poles, for example, it has to have been painted at the weekend, between February and August. Many of the people in Catterline came forward to talk about Eardley. A neighbour remembered her painting in winter at the foot of her garden in 1963. Another recalled the visits of the baker, milk and grocery vans and how Eardley lined up with everyone else but was too shy to speak. Mr Simpson, the first headmaster of the local school which opened in 1956, is still going strong at 100. Although the village was tiny and he lived only a few houses away from Eardley, he was apologetic that he had never had a proper conversation with her. That in fact said everything. Eardley liked Catterline because nobody bothered her there. She was lesbian, but they either didn’t know or didn’t care. Everyone was polite but she could get on with her life. The Glasgow art world in the 1950s was a tough, harddrinking, macho place. No wonder the windswept beach at Catterline appealed. Several people came forward with letters and memories. Most important of all was a box of unpublished letters exchanged between Eardley and the artist Lil Neilson, who met and became lovers in autumn 1962. With Neilson living in England, the letters focus on day-to-day life. Eardley’s neighbour, Mrs Taylor, looms large. A marvellous figure, straight out of a Balzac novel, she wore light summer dresses all year round, cleaned the church, cooked dinner at the school, kept a goat, delivered newspapers and often popped by with food for Eardley. In turn, Eardley collected her pension from the Post Office on the main road and got her a bucket of water every day from the spring tap at the foot of the brae. The artist Angus Neil, who followed Eardley to Catterline and did odd-jobs for her, is also ever present. Eardley speaks of the books she read (often high-brow: Proust, Beckett, Sartre), her desperation to learn to drive, and her love of music (Ella Fitzgerald was ‘fabulous’), which she first listened to on a wind-up gramophone. When she moved to a cottage with electricity, she bought a television. She was only the second person in the village to have one. It was mainly so that a friend could watch Wimbledon but we find Eardley watching it occasionally, enjoying the up-market arts programme Monitor, but also revelling in Diana Dors’ appearance on Juke Box Jury. Eardley emerges as both ordinary and extraordinary. You can see that the village, and the villagers, were vital to her development as an artist.

‘Eardley emerges as both ordinary and extraordinary. You can see that the village, and the villagers, were vital to her development as an artist’

2

Patrick Elliott is Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland

Joan Eardley: Land & Sea – A Life in

Catterline is available by pre-order from nationalgalleries.org

3 1

Audrey Walker, Nets

2 Audrey Walker, Eardley painting the sea at Catterline, c. 1959 © Jane Walker

3 Photographer and date unknown. Outside No 18 Catterline. Joan Eardley sitting on bench outside cottage

4 Joan Eardley standing beside sink. ‘Joan Eardley Catterline - Summer 1961. Grinding paint with mortar.’ Photographer unknown Images courtesy of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art archive

4