|
Date: |
|
Description: | 74.0 x 101.0 s. b. l. "JOAN EARDLEY" CRE EARDLEY, Joan; (Scottish; 1921-1963) This picture is one of a remarkable late series of landscape subjects executed by one of the most outstanding representatives of the modern Scottish tradition. Despite her early death, Joan Eardley may be celebrated as a notable individualist who, though respecting contemporary developments in expressionistic art, trusted her own judgment above all else.
Eardley's initial training began at Glasgow School of Art in 1940, where, as a student of Hugh Adam Crawford, her talents in line drawing, if not yet in the complex mystery of handling paint, became swiftly apparent. As in the case of David McClure, 'war work' necessitated a lull in her development, but she swiftly returned to study at Hospitalfield House in 1946 before undertaking Glasgow School of Art Post-Diploma studies. During this phase she produced some fine landscapes and figure studies - still dependent upon line rather than colour - observed during travels in France and Italy.
By 1949, she was a resident of Glasgow again, and began to immortalise the cast-eyed, begrimed yet defiantly mischievous 'street kids' invariably associated with her. She unerringly tapped the fundamental indomitability of her Glasgow sitters, much as she would empathise with the moods of the unforgiving Scottish landscape in her final, richly productive years at Catterline, a weatherbeaten coagulation of dwellings on the rim of the cruel North Sea.
'Winter Sea III' was exhibited in Edinburgh in 1958, a product of the near-maturation of that impressive late phase. The artist positioned herself frighteningly close to the sea-surge to achieve this composition, and her technique, rather than being a thing of deep calculation - indeed, practical considerations were against it - became a vehicle for transmission of the mood which she divined in the churning, slate-grey wildness about her. This may seem pathetic fallacy, but in Eardley it was fact. She saw, and felt, the landscape in a mediation which was almost shamanic, and 'Winter Sea' confirms the bond which existed between her and her subjects during the painting process.
Text © Marion Lawson, History of Art Department, University of Glasgow 1984. | License: | http://www.hmag.gla.ac.uk/spirit/rights/ | Publisher: | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow | Rights holder: | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow | Subjects: | LANDSCAPE : SEASCAPE : SCOTLAND : FEMALE ARTIST : CAMPUS : CAMPUS : | Source: | Hunterian Museum | Creator: | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow | Identifier: | http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
|
|