The career of the Scottish painter Joan Eardley (1921 – 1963) is regarded as being comprised of three distinct phases, reaching maturity in her distinctive paintings of children in Townhead, Glasgow, between 1950-57, and, from the late 1950s until her death in 1963, the land and seascapes of Catterline which constitute her ‘late style’. In contrast to the art historical preoccupation with the latter two phases, this paper focuses on Eardley’s early period.

This paper will set out to demonstrate that the Arran works show that the notion that Eardley ‘discovered’ rural or pastoral subject matter at Catterline in the 1950s is a misconception; a number of works from Arran highlight the artist’s sustained interest in landscape from the very start of her career.

We will also compare key early work produced from holidays with Margot Sandeman (1922-2009) on Arran at ‘The Tabernacle’; to other works Eardley produced in the 1940s, including her 1948-49 GSA /RSA Carnegie Travelling Scholarship to Italy. By examining work from the same decade, this will allow the Arran works to be placed in a wider context of Eardley’s oeuvre. Through visual analysis, for example, can any connections be made when placing the drawings of Jeannie Kelso (Eardley and Sandeman’s friend and neighbour at High Corrie) alongside Eardley’s drawings from Italy of older women, such as the similarity in the naturally posed figure? The paper will seek, through comparison, to look for early tropes in Eardley’s work that continue through to her better known, later works.