Exclusive:Final painting by legendary Scottish artist 'finished' 60 years after her death

Left behind on the easel at the time of the great artist’s death, the painting has remain unfinished - until now.

A final version of the late Joan Eardley’s work Two Children, which was in progress when she died aged just 42 from breast cancer, has now gone on show in Glasgow, the city that inspired the artwork.

Artist Kate Downie at Glasgow Women's Library where her 'finished' version of Joan Eardley's last piece Two Children is now on show. | John Devlin

Two Children has been reimagined by artist Kate Downie, who has ‘completed’ the work by starting it again - and finishing it in a style she believes Joan would have followed in the final months of her life.

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The finished piece will now go on show at Glasgow Women’s Library, where the subjects of the painting - sisters Pat and Ann Samson - visited to see the final piece more than 60 years after they first posed for Eardley in her Townhead home and studio.

At the beginning of the process, Ms Downie considered completing the painting as an act of keeping Eardley alive. But, by the final brushstrokes, it became clear that it was more about laying her to rest. 

Ms Downie said: “As the project develops, I realise that I cannot keep Joan alive, or paint as if she had lived to a ripe old age because quite simply, she did not.

“All I have done is symbolically give her a few more months of good health to finish it. Finding that I can’t keep her alive, it seems instead that as I paint, I am laying her to rest.” Ms Downie, from Ceres in Fife, said she was conscious of staying faithful to Eardley whilst, at the same time, making the work her own and updating the piece for the 21st century. 

She worked with ten Glasgow children for the project, aged between one and 12, and has produced two paintings. The first - Four Children, 1962 - 2022 by Kate Downie (after Joan Eardley) - completes Eardley’s unfinished work and the second, ‘Dead or Alive’, is a brand new piece. The two will go on show in Glasgow, along with 16 other artworks.

Eardley’s original unfinished painting features foil sweetie wrappers and newspaper cuttings to represent the flotsam and jetsam of Glasgow street life.

Ms Downie’s version includes the silver Dr Martens and red wellington boots worn by her young models and features a number of contemporary objects in the pram such as a flat screen TV and anglepoise lamp.

It also incorporates scraps of newspaper printed around the time of the COP26 climate summit, which was just beginning as she started work on the painting.

Throughout the process, Ms Downie said it was like engaging “in conversation” with Eardley and building a strong emotional connection as she tried to figure out how the painting would have been finished.

Adele Patrick, co-director of Glasgow Women’s Library said: “Glasgow Women's Library has been championing women artists for over three decades. We are thrilled that a formally 'hidden' Scottish woman artist, Joan Eardley, whose work is now regarded as of such significance and a brilliant contemporary Kate Downie will be shown in the library in this unique way.

“Both Eardley and Downie convey the deep, sensitive and profound ways that artists see people, the connections between them and the worlds they inhabit and we are thrilled at the prospect of audiences and visitors discovering their works in our welcoming space during the exhibition run.”

- ‘Conversations with Joan’ will open at Glasgow Women’s Library from today.