Post-view look at Joan Eardley
Winter exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
6th November 2007 - 13th January 2008
Joan Eardley, Children and Chalked Wall 3,
Collage on Canvas,
National Gallery of Scotland
Joan Eardley (1921-1963), the British artist is best known for her post-war social realism paintings of Glasgow tenement children and her dramatic landscape and stormy paintings. To the outsider, the strength and emotion within her is perceptible within her work. Since her death in 1963 there has never been so comprehensive an exhibition of her work as the one held at the National Gallery of Scotland this past winter. There is a mixture of public and privately collected work ranging from the work listed above, to her student studies at Art School generously donated by her sister Mrs Pat Black in 1987 (which partly formed the basis of the research).
The article I propose to submit will investigate the groupings that were made during the exhibition of her works and how they relate between one another. As this review will be post-view, i.e. after the closure of the exhibition, I would like to focus on the compassion shown by Eardley for the tenement children and also the companionship depicted within the images which was a theme within the exhibition.
I will explore many areas, including the composition of the exhibition itself, and how this reflects the different emotional periods of her life.