JOAN EARDLEY R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1921-1963)
THE PATTERNED SKIRT
Pastel on sandpaper
28cm x 21.5cm (11in x 8.5in)
Eardley’s instinctive rapport with the children of the Townhead district of Glasgow, whether observed in the streets or portrayed in her studio, is clear in the affectionate yet unsentimental paintings and works on paper in which they feature.As her friend and biographer Cordelia Oliver explained: “Above all, her subject was the working-class Glasgow child whom she made live as no one before her. The artist herself, gentle by nature and indeed, almost too modest (although her work always shows the ruthlessness of utter integrity) was taken for granted by the shy, dour, giggling, hopping, skipping, baby-minding and comic-reading raggle-taggle hordes she constantly drew – and gave ‘pieces’ to. It was this that made her able to light the spark that always flies between painter and sitter in the making of a fine portrait.” (Cordelia Oliver, ‘Joan Eardley RSA’, Joan Eardley RAS (1921-1963): A Memorial Exhibition, Scottish Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1964, exh.cat., p.2)Not least due to her young subjects’ energy, Eardley worked at speed, often using pastel to introduce areas of rich colour and sometimes, as in The Patterned Skirt, on sandpaper, whose abrasiveness adds a tactility and sense of material realism. The girl’s thoughtful gaze at first the artist and now the viewer is compounded by the neat holding of her hands in her lap. A varied, gestural use of pastel captures the vivid patterning and palette of the titular garment, conveying a sense of the immediacy of and moment of execution. Eardley herself stated:“The character of Glasgow lies in its back streets which are for me pictorially exciting…The back streets mean almost entirely…playing children – all over the streets…They usually come up and say ‘Will you paint me?’ In fact I am always having knocks on the door and this question. Some of them I don’t feel particularly interested in and so I just send them away, but the ones that I want to paint, I try to get to sit still…and do the best I can.” (quoted by Oliver, op.cit., p.9)