The story of the shy Scottish prodigy who brought working class lives into high-end galleries

This month, the centenary of the adopted Scottish painter, Joan Eardley (1921-1963), is celebrated in galleries and auction rooms throughout Scotland.

Although a heroine north of the border, Eardley is yet to be feted internationally. Consequently, she is relatively affordable. A handful of paintings have scraped past £100,000 at auction, but Guy Peploe, whose Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh has represented her estate since her death, says: "Her best works are rare now and would fetch half a million pounds." He will show 40 works priced from £3,000 to £200,000 in July.

Painfully shy, Eardley had a tough start in life. Her father, who was gassed in the First World War, suffered from depression, became an alcoholic, and died by suicide when she was eight. The young Joan turned to art as a means of dealing with anxiety. She was a tough cookie, and learned joinery to build boats during the war. After she left art college, she went to live in the poorest part of Glasgow to escape her middle-class upbringing. Some of her most memorable images are of slum kids hanging out on the graffiti-covered Glasgow streets.

Eardley's favourite retreat, though, was the two-room Watch House on the cliffs overlooking the sea in the remote fishing village of Catterline near Aberdeen. She liked it there, she said, because "no one comes near" - except for her closest friends, such as the eccentric joiner, Angus Neil, who made a roof out of her discarded picture canvases to keep the rain out. Those canvases are highly sought after now by collectors.

Another close friend was Audrey Walker, a married mother of two. Eardley's correspondences with Audrey are a mixture of work diary and love letter. In those days, lesbians were ostracised by polite society, so that part of her life was kept private.

In Catterline, she weathered all conditions to paint outside, securing her easel with an anchor in the gales as she worked to capture the rough seas and stormy skies - expressionistic semi-abstractions that have been likened to Turner and Jackson Pollock.

In the late 1950s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but just painted more. It was then that she had some successful exhibitions in London, notably one curated by The Daily Telegraph's art critic, Terence Mullaly, and another at the respected Roland Browse & Delbanco gallery, which was planning to show her work in New York when fate intervened, and a brain tumour destroyed her eyesight.

Taken to hospital from her cottage on a stretcher to the local railway station, a small crowd had gathered to wave her off. She couldn't see them, but she could hear them. She died on August 16 1963, aged just 42. "Had she lived longer," Peploe says, "she would have been an international superstar."

Joan Eardley: centenary events

·       Fine Art Society, Edinburgh,  May 6-29. Exhibition including unique vintage photographs of Eardley by Oscar Marzaroli: £2,200 - £3,000. Drawings of Glasgow life: £7,500 - £18,000

·       Bonhams Scottish Art sale, Edinburgh, May 13. Four examples from £3,000 to £15,000

·       Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. A special display dedicated to Eardley’s Catterline landscapes and marking the Museum’s reopening to the public from May 16

·       Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh. ‘A Century of Joan Eardley’,  a dedicated section of their forthcoming Scottish Paintings & Sculpture auction on June 10. Over 160 pictures from £1,000 to £50,000

·       Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh. Solo selling exhibition of 40 works from July 28-August 28. Drawings from £3,000, paintings up to £200,000

·       Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. Online centenary event on 18 May. Exhibition of works from the University of Glasgow collection running from 30 July-31 October 

·       Glasgow Women's Library. Exhibition of five artworks on loan from the University of Edinburgh Art Collection, October 28-February 12, 2022

·       Perth Museum and Art Gallery. Exhibition bringing together works from the permanent collection held in Perth with works from the National Galleries of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, and the University of Dundee. 27 November-31 March 2022

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