Friday 17th April

Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm an avid charity shop trawler. I blogged last year about the £75 framed Alfred Heaton Cooper print from the Heaton Cooper Gallery in Grasmere I bought for £5 from a charity shop in Clay Cross. Admittedly, I'm usually looking for art books and occasionally clothes but I do have a look at the odd painting, mainly looking for frames but in this story, the shop seems to have spotted the find before it was exposed to the public.

This article is courtesy of BBC Scotland. 

A "long lost" painting by Joan Eardley - known for her depictions of Glasgow street children and an Aberdeenshire fishing village - has sold for £29,500 after being discovered in a charity shop.

Staff at the shop in the East Midlands were curious about the artwork when they found a faded label on the back which linked it to The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh.

The gallery was able to confirm it as Summer Fields by Eardley, and it has now been sold it to a private collector of Scottish art.

The shop which found it wished to remain nameless, but gallery director Tommy Zyw said it was the largest single sale in the charity's history and would help it support medical research.

Eardley, who was born in England in 1921 and moved to Scotland as a teenager, is known for her depictions of Glasgow's street children and the coastal landscapes of Catterline, an Aberdeenshire fishing village.

She died at the age of 42 in 1963.

Zyw described Eardley as "a star who continues to rise as her audience grows and more and more people engage with her subject and her life and work".

Summer Fields was painted around 1961 and captures the "dying sunset spilling across the corner of a Catterline field".

Zyw told how the gallery is often contacted by owners of paintings to do valuations.

He said most of the time they turn out to be framed posters or works by "family members, but occasionally they get something "very, very special".

"This is just what happened with this remarkable painting which was sent to us from a charity shop in the East Midlands," he said.

He explained that the manager of the shop had been going through items from a house clearance when he spotted "a small dark oil painting".

He said on the reverse of it there was a fragment of a label, on which there were only a few legible words.

"One was 'summer ', one was 'Joan' and one was 'The Scottish Gallery' and as soon as we picked up the phone our interest was piqued - could this be a long lost Joan Eardley painting?"

Zyw said the painting was then kept at a shop worker's house until it could be collected and brought to the gallery by an art carrier.

My pulse was quickening as I was unwrapping the bubble," he said.

"As soon as the bubble wrap was lifted from the painting's surface I knew exactly what it was - it just had to be a Joan Eardley painting."

"The same way you are familiar with your family members or best friend's handwriting - the handling of the paint, the way it was presented all spoke instantly of the great master Joan Eardley."

He said he was also able to use information on the label to confirm its provenance.

"I was able, given those small fragments of information, to look up its original sale in our historic daybooks and I could find that the sale written in scrolling script in these old ledgers was the sale of Summer Fields in May 1961.

"And so that was the final seal of approval to authenticate this painting and to start its journey back to public display."

The painting was then cleaned before being exhibited at the British Art Fair in London in September 2025 and then at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh's New Town in October.

Zyw said: "It was visited by many, many thousands of people - including the original manager of the charity shop who came and enjoyed seeing the painting in a completely different context from when it first arrived with him."

Zyw said Summer Fields then caught the eye of a collector and the charity was "over the moon" with the sale.

"It was something they were all extremely excited about, from the shop manager who first found it, to higher up in head office, they've all followed this journey with great excitement," he said.

"We are in touch with lots of art connoisseurs, art lovers and people looking for that one special painting to add to their art collection, and the painting is now with a great lover of Scottish art, particularly post-war art, and so it is now happily hanging in somebody else's home for the next chapter in this painting's story to unfold."

In other news....

I hadn't recovered much by last weekend and I started to suspect that it wasn't just a bad cold. Natasha and Dylan went down to Chesterfield for Archies Birthday party and I was left feeling ill and very sorry for myself. On their return I suggested I do a covid test as a lot of my symptoms seemed to be similar to my first covid episode back in 2020, which completely floored me for 2 weeks. On Monday Natasha came back from work with a test kit and as suspected I tested positive for covid. It explained a lot of my symptoms and particularly my total lethargy.

On Wednesday, fed up with watching TV  I did my tax return and next month's quiz. At least it was something useful. Doing my tax return was very revealing as to which of my income streams are most profitable. It also showed that last year was my most profitable since we moved to Northumberland!

On Thursday, when I was beginning to feel better,  I decided to try and do some watercolours for Jetty Gallery in Oban. Annie will soon be requesting more and I know exactly what she wants so I thought I would get ahead of the game. I managed 6 Scottish watercolours which, after a long lay off, I enjoyed doing.

Hopefully by Monday I will be fully recovered and able to get back in my studio for a spell. I am aware though that as our mortgage has now been approved the big pack up is imminent and my studio is a priority. I have no idea how all this will affect my production. I will have to continue to paint here until I can get the new studio built which I can't do until we've actually got the new house. It's all going to be a massive juggling act.