Joan Eardley RSA

(British, 1921-1963)

Tenement

Footnotes

Another unfinished tenement scene has been painted by the artist on the reverse of the canvas.

Provenance
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, Edinburgh, 23 March 1993, lot 342.

In Townhead, Eardley lived in a top-floor studio above a scrap-metal shop. The studio contained little more than a bed, a stove, a sink, and her painting equipment. The population density in Townhead was four times the average in Glasgow and the tenements were in a state of disrepair. Buildings and shops were getting boarded up for demolition by the Council's bulldozers. In 1959, Eardley explained what drew her to this area: 'I like the friendliness of the back streets. Life is at its most uninhibited here. Dilapidation is often more interesting to a painter as is anything that has been used and lived with – whether it be an ivy-covered cottage, a broken farm-cart or an old tenement.' (P. Elliott and A. Galastro, Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2016, p. 14).

Eardley became a regular sight in the streets of Townhead, pushing a pram filled with art materials or sketching buildings and local folk in chalks and pastels, which were then worked up into paintings in the studio. She was well aware that the physical world she painted was disappearing before her eyes. Her work is an independent voice, depicting, with sympathy but brutal honesty, a community that was vital and authentic but not obviously beautiful.