Cornerstone No. 184, page 16
Great Scot! 60: Joan Eardley
This Great‘ Scot’ shares a distinction with GSs 19 and 33( resp. Eric Liddel and Elsie Inglis) in that the subject, although truly Scottish, was born in foreign parts...
Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley, future‘ humanistic’ artist, was born in Warnham
( West Sussex) on May 18th, 1921. Her family were dairy farmers and her mother a true Scot of maiden name Morrison.‘ Aah’ you may exclaim,‘ a healthy occupation in a bucolic and fresh-air part of the country!’ Things did not work out like that for Joan and her younger sister, for their father, gassed in the WWI conflict, suffered a nervous breakdown and subsequently committed suicide. Joan was nine years old. Mother moved the family to Blackheath thus from bucolia, into‘ The Smoke’. Although this may seem a step downwards there was money in the South – if you are in the right place( s) – and our subject was in a‘ good’ place; 1929, and an aunt paid for Joan’ s, and her sister’ s education at a private school, and it was here that her artistic talent was spotted.
Art school in Blackheath and then Goldsmiths College( London) in 1938 were good places before the call of the North grew too strong and mother consequently brought the girls‘ back home’ – well, to Glasgow in 1939 where she enrolled at the Glasgow school of art as a day student – and that road( that of day student), believe me, is a hard road to tread when you are looking for a qualification that might open a few doors in the future. At this school, GS 60 was influenced by the‘ Scottish Colourists( see GS 57 – J. D. Fergusson – to see who they were). Her main and abiding influence came from Margot Sandemen who was to be awarded the Sir James Guthrie Prize for Portraiture – the significance of this, as far as Joan Eardley is concerned, is that the prize, a biography of Guthrie( by Sir James Caw) is still a prized possession of J. K. H.’ s family.
A sojourn in the south of England, roots in Scotland – what next for our subject? Why not Italy and France? After more studies, in London then in Arbroath, Joan went‘ continental’ in 1948 and 1949, particularly in Italy where she came under the influences of Massacio and of Piero della Francesca. Back in Scotland by the end of 1949 she set up an exhibition of the work accomplished during her‘ Italian time’ and it was at this‘ expo’ that her scenes of beggars, peasants and