Artist Joan Eardley

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Scotland, from 1940 to 1963, the artist Joan Eardley produced a cache of monumental seascapes, landscapes, and poignant portraits. When she died aged 42 of breast cancer, people were still trying to categorise her work - part abstract expressionist, part Scottish colourist, part social realist, part kitchen sink (one of her first solo exhibitions was in a cinema). She worked with oil and pastels, but also used collage and plaster on her canvas, as well as gravel and sand and bits of plants (one gallerist scraped these bits off, confused.) She even used graffiti in her portraits of children living in tenements in Glasgow, decades before it became fashionable. A new exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland hangs Joan's work alongside some of the most cherished and valuable paintings in their collection, including works by Monet and Constable. Curator Kerry Gledhill talks to Antonia Quirke about looking for 'synergies' between the works she has chosen to exhibit, and about Joan's short, passionate, productive life and working practice.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	Shall we get cracking?
0:08.7	You've got a BBC podcast coming up.
0:10.8	These were immensely popular.
0:13.0	But if you also like looking back,
0:14.7	then the BBC has loads of history podcasts to offer.
0:17.6	Proof that being a historian is a very exciting job.
0:19.7	Covering everything.
0:20.7	From epic events.
0:21.7	It was the year 1666. Two personal stories. It was an anxiety that people felt even in the ancient world.
0:27.9	So in future, for more history podcasts, free people making a free choice about what they wanted.
0:34.3	Search History on BBC Sounds.
0:40.3	Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, the program that
0:45.3	investigates the creative process.
0:47.9	I'm Antonia Quirk, and this edition is unusual in that its subject has been dead some 60 years.
0:57.2	They don't take much encouraging to come up and be painted.
1:01.8	They don't pose.
1:03.6	They usually come up and say, will you paint me?
1:09.4	From the 1940s to the early 1960s, the Scottish artist Joan Erdley painted portraits of children
1:16.7	and wild land and seascapes. These nature paintings were intensely created, mostly outdoors
1:23.8	in all weathers. Joan applied oil paint with tremendous vigour and dynamism,
1:30.1	often leaving bits of sand
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.