JOAN EARDLEY R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1921-1963)
CATTERLINE
Oil on board
28cm x 52cm (11in x 20.5in)
The Artist's Estate, no.EO 307;The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh (2160)
Catterline is believed to depict South Row in the titular fishing village on the north-east coast of Scotland that inspired many of Joan Eardley’s most celebrated works. Eardley first visited Catterline in 1951 and made frequent painting trips there between 1952 and 1954, before renting the small cottage at No. 1 South Row. She thereafter divided her time between Catterline and Glasgow, eventually using No.1 as a store and buying No. 18 in 1959.The modest dwellings, ten in all, make up the longest of the three ‘rows’ in the village, all built in the 18th century on a slope and facing north-east over the bay. With the others, ‘they form a little necklace of cottages which fringe the top of a steep cliff’ and several remained without water or electricity until the 1980s. (Patrick Elliott, Joan Eardley: Land & Sea – A Life in Catterline, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2021, pp.14 & 26)Catterline reveals the deep connection Eardley developed with the village, its natural environment, the impact of the cycle of the seasons there and its often-heightened weather conditions. With a technique as varied and expressive as the scene before her and the sensations experienced whilst painting it, the little houses hold their place amidst the physicality of the earth in the foreground and the drama played out across the sky above their rooves. In 1961, Eardley declared:“When I’m painting in the north-east I hardly ever move out of the village…I find that the more I know of the place, or of one particular spot, the more I find to paint…I don’t think I’m painting what I feel about scenery, certainly not scenery with a name; because that is the north east, just vast wastes, vast seas, vast areas of cliff…well – you’ve just got to paint it.‘ (quoted in Patrick Elliott and Anne Glastro, Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place, Edinburgh, 2016, p.11)