These days most children, rich or poor, seem to have access to designer trainers and fashionable clothes. Joan Eardley’s painting, “Two Children”, shows a time when it was easy to tell a child’s social standing by looking at her - when clothes didn’t have to fit or be fashionable and when a lazy eye or squint remained untreated.

Eardley was born in Warnham, Sussex, in 1921, but settled in Glasgow with her family in 1940. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art during the war years when there was a reduction in staffing and restriction on materials.

Her first studio was in the Townhead area of Glasgow and was surrounded by overcrowded tenements and graffiti-covered walls. It was in this environment that Eardley painted the street urchins in their “barren playgrounds” and, in particular, the Samson family, who became her favourite models.

One of her contemporaries recalls: “I have a vivid memory of her in drawing class, standing - as she invariably did at her board, feet straddling the floor on either side - her gaze fixed on the model, putting no mark on paper until enough visual information was absorbed about stance, thrust, weight and balance - in contrast to most of her fellows with their tentative, premature scribblings.”

Eardley also studied in France and Italy, where she was inspired by the old masters Massaccio and Giotto. However, it is generally acknowledged that the leaders of the contemporary movement of that time - Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Roualt - strongly influenced her as she was drawn to their bold use of colour.

Eardley’s “Two Children” shows pale, undernourished sisters with lank, tangled hair and lifeless eyes. They are painted against a background of vibrant red - a metal store which had been given a gaudy face-lift. The girls’ expressions are difficult to interpret: one has a passive (in the Glasgow vernacular “glaikit”), expression while the older girl holds her hand to her face in shock or surprise. What has she seen? Fighting dogs, a thief making away with a woman’s purse or is she laughing? The eyes don’t seem to tell us. Their clothes are a mish-mash of styles, patterns and colours - a hastily thrown-on shawl, a thin summer dress.

Eardley uses a variety of media in her composition - oils, pastels, newspaper, sweet papers and stencils - building up the flotsam and jetsam of Glasgow street life. The painting is monumental in scale and glistens vibrantly with oils and sparkling foil.

Lesson ideas This poem, “To Joan Eardley”, by Edwin Morgan will inspire pupils from Year 6 upwards: Pale yellow letters humbly struggling across The once brilliant red of a broken shop face C O N F E C T I O and a blur of children at their games, passing gazing as they pass at the blur of sweets in the dingy, cosy Rottenrow window - an Eardley on my wall Such rags and streaks that master us!

that fix what the pick and bulldozer have crumbled to a dingier dust, the living blur fiercely guarding energy that has vanished cries filling still the unechoing close!

I wandered by the rubble and the houses left standing kept a chill, dying life in their islands of stone.

No window opened as the coal cart rolled and the coalman’s call fell coldly to the ground.

But the shrill children jump on my wall Older pupils will be able to handle the fact that the artist died before finishing the work (it was found on her easel after her death), but you may not wish to mention this with younger children.

However, it is important to discuss the idea that artists did not always want to complete work. Why might this be? Often it was because the artist simply gave up because the piece was not working out properly. Schematic sketches are often unfinished and can find their way into gallery collections. Sketches by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci remain incomplete, which seems to lend a certain charm to them.

Primary Look closely at the visual elements of line, tone, pattern, colour, texture and form of the painting. A bag of newspaper, cardboard, foil, and tissue pieces can be compared by primary children to see if they appear in the picture. Papers not in the painting can be discussed for their colour and texture. Fabric scraps showing patterns can also be compared.

Talk about the materials the artist uses. Gather together brushes of different shapes and sizes, palette knives, a paint palette, a tube of oil paint and some canvasses. Young children will not be familiar with very small or very big brushes and will probably not have encountered most of the other materials so show them how the artists use these and discuss their lustre and effect that they give.

Pupils should be encouraged to write about the painting, from a simple descriptive piece to a more creative approach, telling a story about the two sisters, their environment and what could be happening in the picture.

Secondary With the use of digital cameras, secondary pupils could take photographs of children playing. (This could be done in co-operation with a local nursery, with consent from parents.) These images could then be scanned and digitally enhanced, in the style of Eardley, using Photoshop software. Pupils should look at the work of Scottish photographer Oscar Marzaroli, whose photographs of Glasgow street children can be compared and contrasted with Eardley’s work.

Drama Drama lessons can be set up with two children, frozen - like the sisters in the painting - and a group acting out what the shocked sister might be looking at. This exercise can work well in secondary drama and will help draw the children into the painting.

Anne Wallace is museum education officer, Glasgow Museums

SUGGESTED READING

Joan Eardley by Cordelia OliverMainstream PublishingPrice: pound;9.95 (paperback); pound;14.99 (hardback)Shades of Scotland 1956-1988 by James Grassie and Oscar Marzaroli (photographer)Mainstream PublishingPrice: pound;4.99 Shades of Gray - Glasgow 1956-1987 by William McIlvanney and Oscar Marzaroli (photographer)Mainstream PublishingPrice: pound;4Collected Poems by Edwin Morgan Carcanet PressPrice: pound;16.95 Visits to Kelvingrove can be arranged by calling Glasgow Museums Education Service. The museum provides cushions and clipboards and bags to explore the visual elements as described. Tel: 0141 287 2747 Email: anne.wallace@cls.glasgow.gov.uk