Joan Eardley Centenary,
★★★★★
The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

ALTHOUGH she died at the age of 42 in 1963, Joan Eardley is a central figure in British 20th-century art, whose work in the 1950s and ’60s reinvents the language of social realism to make a vision of the urban poor, and also puts up a uniquely British and figurative response to the Abstract Expressionist school of America. It is a single-minded achievement that defines the best of post-war British art.

The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh has been showing her work since 1957, and gave her a first solo show in 1961. This celebration of the centenary of her birth is the fruit of remarkable loyalty and careful curatorship. Although it limits itself to small-scale works, it displays hitherto unknown paintings and drawings that mark the key movements of Eardley’s career. If anything, the show profits from a reduced scale to render the overall shape of her achievement even more accessible.

From the perspective of another millennium Eardley emerges as a pivotal figure, who reaches back into the 19th-century tradition of realism, and also forward towards a new vision of landscape. As a creative woman in post-war Britain she resembles her exact contemporary Sylvia Plath for the unique lyricism, empathy and daring formalism of her best work.