The £10,000 postcard: Acclaimed artist’s miniature masterpiece sold
An iconic postcard-sized painting of Glasgow street children eating sandwiches has fetched nearly £10,000 at auction in London.
Artist Joan Eardley had a studio in Glasgow’s East End in the 1950s and often painted children in the now-demolished Townhead area in exchange for a few pennies or a jam sandwich.
Her 11.2x14.9 cm framed sketch, Glasgow Children, in pen and ink, gouache, pastel and charcoal, was among the highlights of Bonhams’ auction, Blazing a Trail: Modern British Women, held in London’s New Bond Street.
An anonymous bidder paid £9,562 for the picture which had been in a private collection for over 30 years.
Christopher Dawson, Bonhams’ head of sale, said: “Joan Eardley’s Glasgow Children packs a real punch for such a small picture. This is a really beautiful example of her classic Glasgow street children.”
Eardley, who studied at Glasgow School of Art in the early 1940s, drew and painted the children who lived in the streets surrounding her home.
The acclaimed artist kept an old-fashioned pram laden with easels and canvases and would sketch the children enjoying outdoor games, or in her studio.
The pictures often depicted youngsters in ragged clothes, or older girls looking after younger siblings. She often gave the boys and girls pencil and crayon sketches to take home.
Townhead was largely demolished in the 1960s and many of the residents dispersed to newly built towns on the outskirts of Glasgow.
Eardley became an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1955. She died from cancer eight years later, aged just 42.