Boy with a Fringe: Sandy

Joan Eardley is celebrated most as a painter of elemental landscapes of roaring seas and barley fields tossing in the wind, but her work as a painter of people is equally important and is now receiving the attention it deserves. When not painting in the coastal village of Catterline in Aberdeenshire, she rented a studio in Glasgow and painted the slum kids. She preferred children to adults as subjects, feeling an empathy with them which comes across in these closely-observed and expressive paintings. These are proper portraits, not caricatures, and the depth of feeling pervading them is often unsettling. Eardley knew these kids, seeing them every day in their tenements, poor and often undernourished, though full of energy and mischief. These are tough images of real people, and Boy with a Fringe: Sandy is a superb example of her uncompromising realism. Boldly but sensitively painted, this portrait has an authority and presence which is unforgettable.

A.L.