Port Glasgow had escaped the bombing raids which had devastated Greenock and Clydebank in the Spring of 1941 and Eardley was inspired by the structures of the shipyards to make industrial landscapes. But for Eardley a place is not summed up by its architecture or commerce: it is the people that matter and give colour and character to a place. The distinctive Port Glasgow tenement rows above the river and yards look immediately forward to her great Glasgow subject, Townhead. Here the curving row is topped with a jumble of chimney stacks above a façade festooned with washing hung out to dry. As the shipyards closed demolition preceded regeneration, the poignant story repeated in most Scottish cities as transport infrastructure and high rise replaced the tenements which contained the communities.
About Joan Eardley
There is an enduring fascination for Joan Eardley far beyond her unconventional life and early death at the age of forty-two. Born in 1921 in Sussex, Joan Eardley’s family moved to Scotland in 1939 and a year later she joined the Glasgow School of Art. She found subjects in the shipyards of Clydebank and the slums of Townhead, at first the run-down tenements and buildings and later the children and streetlife around Rottenrow where the character of the people and the place became the vital subject of her work.
