Lot 156
JOAN EARDLEY R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1921-1963) §
TENEMENT - WINTER
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale ft. A Century of Scottish Colourists | Lots 88 to 168 | Thursday 04 June 2026 from 6pm
Description
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
72cm x 124cm (28.25in x 48.75in)
Provenance
Acquired from Mrs Jean Martin by Mrs Gladys Eileen Lewis in 1967 and thence by descent to the present owner
Literature:
Christopher Andreae, Joan Eardley, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2013, p.28, repr. col. pl.16.
Footnote
Born in Sussex to a Scottish mother, Eardley trained in Scotland and lived there for her adult life; as a result she is claimed as one of the leading Scottish artists of the twentieth century. She studied at Glasgow School of Art and at Hospitalfield College of Art, Arbroath before renting her first studio in Townhead, Glasgow in 1952. The area, of mixed residential and light industrial use, was overcrowded and dilapidated. However, she was drawn to its vibrancy and closeknit community. She was a regular sight in the streets, sketching buildings, people and scenes of daily life in chalk and pastel, which she then worked up into paintings in the studio.
Tenement – Winter is a significant painting of the built environment in which Eardley chose to work. She found the buildings of Townhead as distinctive and characterful as the children who lived in and played amongst them. As her biographer, Christopher Andreae, has written:
‘Why … was she so attracted to the last, vanishing … vestiges of Victorian working-class Glasgow? She described it as a community vitality and indeed it was disappearing fast… [the] … tenements amongst which she chose her two studios (first on Cochrane Street by the City Chambers and later on the corner of McAslin Street and St James Road in Townhead) had not yet been demolished or cleaned up, though it was only a matter of time. These buildings were the children’s rough and ready, familiar playground … She said … she headed instinctively to these areas.’ (Christopher Andreae, Joan Eardley, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2013, p.27).
Tenement – Winter was in Eardley’s cottage at No.1 Catterline (now known as No.1 South Row) when she died in 1963. The cottage was purchased from her Estate by Mrs Jean Martin, from whom it was purchased by Mrs Gladys Eileen Lewis in 1967. Under Mrs Lewis’s instruction the painting was sent to Mr William Macaulay of Aitken Dott & Son in Edinburgh for conservation treatment; he worked with the Artist and also with her Estate. A Glasgow scene can be found on the painting’s reverse.