Joan Eardley RSA
21 April - 13 June 2026
Joan Eardley is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential Scottish painters of her generation. Well known for her empathetic portraits of the street children in Glasgow, she also produced an extraordinary body of landscape paintings inspired by the fishing village of Catterline, on the north east coast of Scotland where she worked from the 1950s. It was there that her style developed dramatically, at the very edge of the sea, in all weathers, conveying the surging power of the ever-changing North Sea.
During her travelling scholarships to Italy and France in 1948-49, she created many drawings and paintings demonstrating a powerful use of rich colour and texture. She was a sharp observer of life, and wrote descriptively of the colour she observed all around her, and her work was influenced by the Fauvists, Van Gogh and other European Expressionist Masters.
This exhibition features a wide range of drawings and paintings from throughout her short career, including an early painting The Rush Hour, which was exhibited in her Glasgow School of Art Degree Show.
Gerber Fine Art is presenting this exhibition to coincide with the display of works by Joan Eardley currently on show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. We hope you will visit the gallery to see this exhibition of over 40 works, or please enjoy browsing on our website.