Download a PDF of the exhibition catalogue - The Scottish Gallery

Child portraiture has always engaged us from Velasquez’ Infanta to Manet,
Bastien-Lepage, our own Glasgow Boys and Eardley herself. The child
image contains the innocence we will all lose so carries a poignancy and
relevance across the years.
Head of a Boy is framed in a simple home-made frame. Joan Eardley
learned joinery during the War and worked with local building firm who
made landing craft (Joan was also tasked with painting the camouflage).
Her basic joinery skills enabled her to knock together her own frames,
although she wrote of her ambition to see her seascapes in handsome
Italian mouldings. So much of her work displays a sense of immediacy often
apparent in the necessity of what she works on; paper is seldom without
a crease or crumple. Boards might have nail holes in the corners and at
least once she used a canvas mail sack tacked over a simple stretcher for
her support. Her medium is not experimental: oil and pastel, are the most
permanent vehicles for pigment.
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