Intimate letters written by Joan Eardley to violinist and photographer Audrey Walker were made public in 2013, 50 years after the artist’s death. The correspondence, which can be read in Christopher Andreae’s monograph on the artist, is affectionate and gentle and offers a personal insight into the love affair between these two women. Eardley and Walker met in Glasgow in 1952 and remained close until Eardley’s premature death from breast cancer in 1963. Walker, who was married in Glasgow, kept many of the letters sent by Eardley whilst she was living in the village of Catterline, on the Kincardineshire coast. Unfortunately, no letters from Walker to Eardley survived, but there is a written tribute that she insisted not to be published until she had passed away. Walker died in Dumfries in 1996. Walker was the photographer of many of the most enduring portraits of Joan Eardley, a selection of which have been shared below.
Passages from letters from Joan Eardley to Audrey Walker:
Joan EardleyI just feel I love you so much – and there just ain’t words – to say it – not words that mean what I feel inside of me – and there’s nothing else that I really want to say – nothing at all...
Joan EardleyI think I am thinking a lot about clouds and sky in relation to painting just now. That’s what seems to dominate me this time – here…. I seem to have little to say tonight. I think I’m tired. I wish you were here. I’ve had a good day – and perfection would be to have you here tonight. But that’s a thing that I daren’t let myself think about.
Joan EardleyThe important thing is – are you alright. You will be going to bed now perhaps – and I am going to bed too. And I hold you very close, and say sleep well – goodnight dear dear you.
Joan EardleyI just feel I love you so much – and there just aint words – to say it – not words that mean what I feel inside me – and there’s nothing else that I really want to say – nothing at all – all the preceding scrawl might just as well not be written – because there’s only one thing that I want to say – one great big bursting feeling that mean you – and means me – whole piles of things that haven’t got words at all.
Passages from Audrey Walker’s tribute to Joan Eardley:
Audrey WalkerTo me she was quite simply the winter sea to which and for which I would give my life.
Audrey WalkerIf anyone ever has a mind to write, many years from now, a book dealing with Joan the person, as well as Eardley the Painter, I feel somehow they should have, sort of germinating in some remote corner of their mind, the conception of the whole Joan.
