Exhibition
Joan Eardley 'Early Eardley: selected works 1940-1950'
10 Nov- 16 Dec 2023
Joan Eardley (1921-1963) is one of Scotland’s most celebrated artists, best known for her depictions of Glasgow’s street children and of Scotland’s North East coastline. This exhibition offers the opportunity to see Eardley’s early works, for which she is lesser known in order to show the ways in which her formative time at The Glasgow School of Art and early experiences from 1940-50 informed the direction and development of her later work.
The works for this exhibition are drawn from The Glasgow School of Art Archives & Collections, Lillie Art Gallery, City Art Centre, Gerber Fine Art and Joan Eardley Estate.
The exhibition will feature life drawings made while Eardley was a student in the 1940s, as well as drawings made while undertaking a Royal Scottish Academy and Carnegie Travelling Scholarship in Italy and France (1948-49). Some of these drawings – of people, landscape and architecture – will be shown along with the scholarship report she was required to submit to the then Director, Douglas Percy Bliss, and other correspondence. The exhibition will also include a small group of sketches from Lincolnshire made during a period spent in the county to undertake a mural commission at a school in 1946. A further two drawings, from GSA’s Archives & Collections are of scenes from Glasgow’s famous Barras Market.
‘Early Eardley: selected works 1940-1950’ will introduce audiences to the artist as a young woman, still learning, experimenting and developing as a painter.
The drawings demonstrate Eardley’s emerging talent and the range and breadth of her interests. Materials Eardley used in her work included pen, ink, chalks, watercolour and blue biro.
‘Early Eardley: selected works 1940-1950’ will open to the public on 10 November 2023 and run until 16 December 2023, 10am-4.30pm at:
Reid Gallery and Window on Heritage,
167 Renfrew Street,
Glasgow,
G3 6RQ
This exhibition is curated by Jenny Brownrigg, Director of GSA Exhibitions, and Professor Susannah Thompson, Head of Doctoral Studies at the GSA. It is in partnership with Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections.
