Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley R.S.A.

Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council, 1975, lent by Mrs P.H. Black;
Edinburgh, Talbot Rice Gallery Retrospective, 1988

Cordelia Oliver, Joan Eardley RSA, 1988, p.18, illus.p.19

STRUCTURE The canvas has been relined. There are some faint areas of craquelure: in the two vertical blue lines near right side of upper edge; about the central figure's head and along the centre of the lower edge. There are some small areas of paint loss: these include near the upper left edge and corner; in the wheel to right of the left hand figure's trousers; in the blue column by the upper right edge and two further spots just right of the wheelbarrow. It may also benefit from a light clean but the work appears in good condition overall with some strong passages of impasto. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV light reveals some areas of flourescene but no apparent signs of retouching. FRAME Held in simple wood frame.
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The present work was executed in 1944 during which time Eardley was working as a joiner’s mate for the boat building firm John A Russell, based near her home in Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire.  During her training at The Glasgow School of Art in the preceding years, Eardley became acutely aware of the work of Sir Stanley Spencer, admiring and identifying in particular with his affinity and ability to depict the communities in which he lived.  Another key influence on this period, and the present work, was Josef Herman who lived and worked in Glasgow between 1940 and 1943, and whose studio Eardley visited on numerous occasions; Herman celebrated the strength and nobility of the working man in the same way that Van Gogh, another of Eardley’s great inspirations, had celebrated peasant farmers in the previous century.  The palette of The Mixer Men is strongly reminiscent of the Van Gogh’s rural subjects in a realist manner, particularly the contrasting blue and ochre of the central workman’s overalls. 

The composition is essentially straightforward, but the application of intense, bold and tonally varied brushstrokes imbues the work with a great sense of energy and movement and typifies one of Eardley’s great strengths, that would ultimately define her career; the complex beauty of the ostensibly simple and everyday.  She also, very much in the manner of Spencer, manipulates perspective making it cramped and claustrophobic.  This reflects and enforces the harshness of the conditions while creating a powerful immediacy for the viewer.  Taken as a whole, these elements result in an important early example of Eardley’s painting that is arguably more powerful and relevant today than it was in 1944.