Colin Middleton Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Colin Middleton Art Value Price Guide

Dec. 04, 2024
Colin Middleton MBE RUA RHA (1910 - 1983) Threshold: Monserrat 2 (1975) Oil on board, 60 x 60cm (23½ x 23½'') Signed Provenance: with David Hendriks Gallery, label verso
Est: €20,000 - €30,000
Colin Middleton MBE RUA RHA (1910 - 1983) Threshold: Monserrat 2 (1975) Oil on board, 60 x 60cm (23½ x 23½'') Signed Provenance: with David Hendriks Gallery, label verso
Adam's
Dec. 02, 2024
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE EVENING STAR, CLONELLY, COUNTY FERMANAGH, 1970
Est: €18,000 - €22,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE EVENING STAR, CLONELLY, COUNTY FERMANAGH, 1970 oil on board signed with monogram lower right; signed, dated and with David Hendriks Gallery label on reverse h:36 w:36 in. Provenance: David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, 1970; K. Kierney Esq.; Collection of Bank of Ireland Throughout the 1960s, the Irish landscape became the main focus of Colin Middleton's work. During that decade he lived first on the north coast, then in Lisburn and subsequently Belfast, and the family spent regular holidays in their caravan near the Mournes and also at Castle Archdale, in Fermanagh, as well as visiting Donegal. All these places provided subject matter for Middleton, as he created a radically new vision of the landscape within Irish art. Middleton's approach to the places he painted balanced his visual and emotional experience of the particular location in that moment, with a rigorous process of abstracting the various elements of the visual, physical and historical landscape, using a very personal pictorial language. Clonelly is close to Lower Lough Erne, one of the places that most inspired Middleton in the second part of the 1960s, and while the image has reduced the specific visual elements of the landscape to a highly formalised series of horizontal bands, the painting is highly evocative of the scale of the landscape, the effect of light as the sun is setting, and the calm mood of the lakes. A solid rectangular block breaks up the horizontals in the foreground and leads the eye towards the middle ground of the composition, with a brief suggestion of a contrasting warm orange-red that reflects the sunset, while the sky begins to break up into small triangles and irregular lozenges. Against the grey that dominates it, the blues and golden yellow of the sky are used with exceptional effect, and in the upper passage of the painting the looser brushwork creates an added luminosity and recalls the expressionist manner in which Middleton had been working two decades earlier. Dickon Hall, October 2024
Whyte's
Dec. 02, 2024
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE LONG MEMORY [WESTERNESS SERIES], 1974/5
Est: €25,000 - €35,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE LONG MEMORY [WESTERNESS SERIES], 1974/5 oil on board signed lower right; signed, titled, dated and with David Hendriks Gallery label on reverse h:24 w:24 in. Provenance: David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, 1976; Collection of Paul and Catherine Daly; Their sale, Adam's 1 October 2008, lot 40; Private collection Exhibited: 'Colin Middleton Exhibition', David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, March to April 1976, catalogue no. 15; 'Personal Choice Exhibition', Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, May to June 1982 (Pictures chosen from the collections of Richard Wood, Dorothy Walker, Cecil King, Stanley & Elizabeth Mosse along with the Daly's) One of the most compositionally innovative paintings of the Westerness Cycle, with its device of a picture within a picture, both using similar compositional arrangements, The Long Memory carries intriguing references across Middleton's career. The Westerness series was the last major group of paintings Middleton completed; John Hewitt wrote that Middleton 'preferred to think of his works as groups or series, as the means of expressing the range and ramifications of his visual reactions to experience, whether sensory or psychological'. (1) The Westerness series can be interpreted as the artist looking back over ideas, techniques and symbols that had remained significant to him, in the context of autobiographical experiences and events. The painting contrasts an enclosed space with an extensive landscape. The perspective of the composition is extended dramatically through the two tables whose boards line up towards the distant mountains in the frame, in a desert landscape which seems to have been inspired by the time Middleton spent in Australia. A female figure looks across this landscape, towards the black sun, which recalls an early surrealist painting by Middleton, The Yellow Door, 1941, a painting partly about disruption, instability and uncertainty. The inset image might be the artist referencing his own creative identity, expressing his own memories or the relationship of art to imagination, even perhaps the dichotomy of recalling or depicting a vast landscape while working in the enclosed space of a studio. The table forms a connection between the two images, as does the surface of the painting, which provides a consistency of texture across both images and encourages a sense that they interweave and overlap in a more complex manner than the clear division of the frame might suggest, that life and art, or memory, are not always easy to separate. Dickon Hall, October 2024 Footnotes: 1. John Hewitt, 'Colin Middleton Retrospective Show', Irish Times, 23rd January 1976
Whyte's
Nov. 15, 2024
The Piano Player
Est: £35,000 - £55,000
Colin Middleton 1910 - 1983 The Piano Player signed Colin M and with monogram (lower left) oil on panel unframed: 91.5 by 76cm.; 36 by 30in. framed: 117 by 102cm.; 46 by 40cm. Executed circa 1974-5. We are grateful to Dickon Hall for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.
Sotheby's
Oct. 08, 2024
COLIN MIDDLETON, MBE RHA RUA, IRISH 1910-1983, WOMAN WITH VASE OF FLOWERS, Oil on Masonite, 24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm.), Frame: 30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm.)
Est: $10,000 - $20,000
COLIN MIDDLETON, MBE RHA RUA IRISH, 1910-1983 WOMAN WITH VASE OF FLOWERS Oil on Masonite Verso gallery label: TOM CALDWELL / GALLERIES/ Dublin (The gallery was founded in 1969 and opened with a one man show of Colin Middleton's works)
Potomack Company
Oct. 01, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910 - 1983) Landscape with Buildings Screenprint, 52 x 39cm
Est: €200 - €300
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910 - 1983) Landscape with Buildings Screenprint, 52 x 39cm
Adam's
Sep. 30, 2024
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) MUSIC, 1953
Est: €30,000 - €50,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) MUSIC, 1953 oil on canvas signed lower right; inscribed with title, dated [1953], numbered [168] and signed again on reverse h:20 w:26 in. Provenance: Whyte's, 29 April 2006, lot 62; Private collection Exhibited: ’Colin Middleton 1939-1954’, Victor Waddington Gallery, Dublin, June 1955 Colin Middleton enjoyed music, and the series of paintings of his second wife Kate seated at their piano, which began in the late 1950s, involved him for more than a decade. The present painting, completed earlier in that decade, shows Middleton at the height of his powers as an expressionist painter working in the northern European tradition (James Ensor was a notable influence). Throughout this period, Middleton was haunted by the war and its aftermath, and its impact on the individual. The turbulent swirling brushwork that dominates Music, and its broad tonal range, evoke an indistinct landscape in which a sense of counterpoint is established between the two musicians. The female violinist is vulnerable in her nakedness, or perhaps a gauzy, transparent dress. Her instrument is that of the wandering musician; she could be one of the dispossessed figures that populate Middleton's post-war work, yet her fair hair and blue eyes radiate youth and optimism and pictorially she dominates the painting. The mysterious pianist, dressed in black, is cast in opposition to her, seated at a grand piano, an instrument redolent of stability and prosperity and very different from the upright whose abstract properties subsequently became of such interest to Middleton. She draws the viewer towards the dark triangle of the lower right-hand corner of the painting, in which two figures, apparently listening to the musicians, seem to be cast adrift and helpless. When first exhibited in Dublin in 1955, the Irish Times reviewer found the work to reveal "flashes" of Middleton's "surrealist idiom", praising the exhibition as a whole for its breadth of style and experimentation (undated newspaper clipping held by N.I.V.A.L., Dublin). 'Music, 1953' is open to a number of interpretations, and is full of ambiguity, but it is a strong and unsettling picture in which no single mood dominates. Dickon Hall, August 2024
Whyte's
Sep. 30, 2024
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) ACROBATS, 1972
Est: €1,500 - €2,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) ACROBATS, 1972 pen and ink with watercolour signed in monogram lower right; inscribed, dated and signed again on reverse h:30.50 w:23 in. Provenance: Caldwell Gallery, Belfast; Irish Paintings and Drawings, Christies, Belfast, 27 October 1989, lot 233; Collection of Dr Henry McKee; Whyte's, 29 September 2008, lot 11; Private collection This unusually large and ambitious drawing, relating closely to a painting of the same title, epitomises many of Middleton’s concerns in the early 1970s. His reconciliation of the images of the landscape with the female form, both visually and symbolically, became wittier and more sexually charged around this period. One could view it as a shift away from Middleton’s interest in Henry Moore and towards a renewed looking at Picasso. The conceit of the acrobats encourages Middleton’s selective re-arrangement and distortion of the human form, with the two acrobats’ bodies rising layered and suggesting the rising of a landscape towards the sun. Dickon Hall
Whyte's
Sep. 30, 2024
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) FEMALE FIGURE AND PORTRAIT, 1941
Est: €15,000 - €20,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) FEMALE FIGURE AND PORTRAIT, 1941 oil on canvas signed in monogram and dated upper centre h:11 w:14 in. Female Figure and Portrait is unusual for Middleton at this time with its suggestion of an interior space, which is rendered almost like a stage set, pared back to the most essential elements. The reduced palette allows the three variously-sized black rectangles spaced across the canvas to dominate, and the device of a painting within a painting, with both figures treated in a similar manner, playfully reinforces the idea of artificiality, while also setting up an uneasy dynamic between the two. The highly abstracted, linear manner of describing form and the figure looks forward to a number of paintings of the mid-1960s, such as the Brockagh series, in which Middleton uses the ambiguity of this pared-back pictorial language to suggest both the female figure and the landscape within a single image. It is often difficult, in Colin Middleton's work of this period, to separate the trauma of the war, and particularly the 1941 Blitz of Belfast, from the emotional suffering he experienced following the death of his first wife, Maye, in 1939, which gave added meaning to his continued use of the female archetype. While his paintings of this time are often more obviously emotional, the present work is strikingly detached and difficult to interpret. Many works from 1941 were exhibited in Middleton's groundbreaking 1943 exhibition at Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. John Hewitt, then a Curator of Art at the Museum, wrote to a mutual friend in July 1941, "I should hazard a guess that Colin's at a climacteric in his development…it will be a period when he will have to be alone, when it will be hard for others to appreciate him." Dickon Hall, September 2024
Whyte's
Sep. 25, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Girl Playing Mozart (1949) Oil on canvas, 76 x 60cm (30 x 24) Signed; Labels verso, one bearing artist mark in ink and dated 1949 and numbered '73' Girl Playing Mozart was painted in 1949, a tr
Est: €30,000 - €50,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Girl Playing Mozart (1949) Oil on canvas, 76 x 60cm (30 x 24) Signed; Labels verso, one bearing artist mark in ink and dated 1949 and numbered '73' Girl Playing Mozart was painted in 1949, a transformative year for Colin Middleton during which he held his first solo exhibition with the Waddington Galleries in Dublin, which immediately established him as one of the leading contemporary Irish artists. The critic of the Dublin Magaine wrote that ÒWith this show, Middleton, from being just one of the more interesting of the moderns, has become a great painterÓ. By the winter of 1949, when he was also working on Girl Playing Mozart, Middleton was completing some of his most ambitious canvases of this period, including Give Me to Drink(NMNI) and Isaiah: 54, and Victor Waddington was planning a group exhibition to tour the United States, which would include his work. Waddington welcomed the present painting on its arrival (ÒThe last group of works you sent down are magnificentÓ), and suggested sending an image of it to those selecting the American exhibition. Female figures from this period of MiddletonÕs work are often depicted with a suggestion of vulnerability or extreme circumstances, often on the edges of society. Instead, the present painting implies a world of some comfort and security, with a vase of flowers behind the musician, who is dressed elegantly and wearing a bracelet or a watch. Music was, however, often used by Middleton to suggest powerful but elusive forces that run through lives, and the womanÕs glance away from her sheet music, her eyes emphasised by the paint surface, hint at an inner life that is hidden from us, and perhaps only expressed through the deeper currents of the music she plays. Dickon Hall, August 2024
Adam's
Sep. 25, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Two Figures Oil on panel, 30.5 x 30.5cm (12 x 12'') Signed with artist's device; also signed, dated and inscribed verso Provenance: With Bell Gallery, Belfast, label verso By the mid-1960s Colin M
Est: €3,000 - €4,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Two Figures Oil on panel, 30.5 x 30.5cm (12 x 12'') Signed with artist's device; also signed, dated and inscribed verso Provenance: With Bell Gallery, Belfast, label verso By the mid-1960s Colin Middleton was beginning to move away from the more austere abstraction that had often dominated his work at the beginning of that decade, with a softer palette matching his less rigorous treatment of form. The female archetype remained central to his work, and the present painting can be related to a series of rather calligraphic and subtly eroticised images of women that he worked on in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dickon Hall, August 2024
Adam's
Sep. 25, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Drawing for St George's Day, Barcelona: Through the Looking Glass Ink on paper, 5 x 11cm (1_ x 4_'') Inscribed on label verso
Est: €400 - €600
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Drawing for St George's Day, Barcelona: Through the Looking Glass Ink on paper, 5 x 11cm (1_ x 4_'') Inscribed on label verso
Adam's
Sep. 11, 2024
***WITHDRAWN***Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Kookaburra Screenprint, 40.5 x 40.5cm, Signed, inscribed and dated 1974, and numbered 11/50.
Est: €800 - €1,200
***WITHDRAWN***Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Kookaburra Screenprint, 40.5 x 40.5cm, Signed, inscribed and dated 1974, and numbered 11/50.
Adam's
Jul. 17, 2024
COLIN MIDDLETON (R.H.A) (R.U.A) (1916-1971)
Est: €400 - €500
Abstract forms. Monogrammed pencil sketch.
Sheppards
May. 29, 2024
Colin Middleton RUA RHA MBE (1910-1983) Louth Coast I Oil on board 61 x 61cm (24 x 24) Signed with artist's device; also signed, inscribed and dated (19) '70 verso
Est: €6,000 - €10,000
Colin Middleton RUA RHA MBE (1910-1983) Louth Coast I Oil on board 61 x 61cm (24 x 24) Signed with artist's device; also signed, inscribed and dated (19) '70 verso
Adam's
May. 02, 2024
Halloween
Est: €50,000 - €80,000
Colin Middleton 1910 - 1983 Halloween signed Colin M (lower right); also signed with monogram, titled and dated Nov. 50. / Jan. 51. on the reverse; further dated Nov 50 / Jan 51 on the canvas overlap oil on canvas unframed: 51 by 76 cm.; 20 by 30 in. framed: 70 by 96.5 cm.; 27 1/2 by 38 in. --------------------------------------------------- Colin Middleton 1910 - 1983 Halloween signé Colin M (en bas à droite); aussi signé avec du monogramme, titré et daté Nov. 50. / Jan. 51. au revers; egalement daté Nov 50 / Jan 51 sur le recto de la toile pliée au verso huile sur toile sans cadre: 51 by 76 cm.; 20 by 30 in. avec cadre: 70 by 96.5 cm.; 27 1/2 by 38 in.
Sotheby's
Apr. 29, 2024
Colin Middleton, Northern Ireland (1910-1983), Love, Pen & ink on beige paper
Est: $300 - $500
Colin Middleton Northern Ireland (1910-1983) Love Pen & ink on beige paper Signed, monogrammed & dated lower centre Titled & inscribed verso
Theodore Bruce Auctioneers & Valuers
Mar. 27, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Note for La Belle Suzanne and Two Other Drawings Three graphite and ink drawings 7 x 9.5cm (2¾ x 3¾) 13.7 x 18.6cm ( 5¼ x 7¼) 15.8 x 16.9cm (6¼ x 6½) sheet sizes Each stamped with Colin Middleton studio
Est: €500 - €600
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Note for La Belle Suzanne and Two Other Drawings Three graphite and ink drawings 7 x 9.5cm (2¾ x 3¾) 13.7 x 18.6cm ( 5¼ x 7¼) 15.8 x 16.9cm (6¼ x 6½) sheet sizes Each stamped with Colin Middleton studio stamp & 1985 (3)
Adam's
Mar. 27, 2024
Colin Middleton RUA RHA MBE (1910 - 1983) Landscape Watercolour, 14 x 21cm (5½ x 8) Signed
Est: €600 - €800
Colin Middleton RUA RHA MBE (1910 - 1983) Landscape Watercolour, 14 x 21cm (5½ x 8) Signed
Adam's
Mar. 27, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910 - 1983) Coleraine 1957 Ink on paper, 26 x 35.5cm (10¼ x 14'') Signed with monogram, inscribed and dated (19)'57; also signed, inscribed and dated verso
Est: €400 - €600
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910 - 1983) Coleraine 1957 Ink on paper, 26 x 35.5cm (10¼ x 14'') Signed with monogram, inscribed and dated (19)'57; also signed, inscribed and dated verso
Adam's
Mar. 27, 2024
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) K. Knitting Oil on canvas, 60 x 49cm (23¾ x 19¼) Signed Exhibited: Belfast, CEMA, January 1961, cat.no.11; ACNI Touring exhibition,1970, Colin Middleton 1960-1970, cat.no.77. Painted in the
Est: €15,000 - €20,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) K. Knitting Oil on canvas, 60 x 49cm (23¾ x 19¼) Signed Exhibited: Belfast, CEMA, January 1961, cat.no.11; ACNI Touring exhibition,1970, Colin Middleton 1960-1970, cat.no.77. Painted in the early 1960s, K Knitting is one of a series of works which are particularly revealing of Middletons domestic life at the time. During the 1940s and much of the 1950s, the figures in his paintings were often invented and symbolic; even in those cases where there had been some inspiration from life, as in Teresa, these figures were given a more universal significance. In the late 1950s Middleton began a series of paintings of his wife, Kathleen, seated at the piano, which he continued through much of the time when they were living in Belfast in the 1960s. There are also more intimate paintings from this time, of subjects including his eldest daughter, Alison, reading, and of Kathleen absorbed in various activities, with knitting apparently a favourite hobby. The present work was painted in Lisburn, where they lived when Middleton was first employed as Head of Art at Friends School. During this time, he balanced his job with an extremely busy exhibiting schedule, including a number of exhibitions with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, in addition to regular, and generally successful, commercial exhibitions in Belfast and Dublin. The flattened picture space and geometric division of the image in K Knitting suggest the influence of Cubism, but might equally relate to the use of pattern and decorative, abstract form recalled from Middletons training and work as a damask designer, which became a strong influence in the 1960s. A similar technique is evident in other works of the period, including Red Landscape, Largymore, a rare landscape painted around Lisburn. A similar use of a dominant colour throughout the painting is evident in K Knitting, with powerful and shifting tones of red suggesting Kathleens strong personality and the artists absorption in painting his wife. Dickon Hall, February 2024
Adam's
Mar. 05, 2024
COLIN MIDDLETON R.U.A. R.H.A. (1910-1983)
Est: €450 - €500
Circus Figure. Monogramed pencil sketch. From the Artist's sketch books, ?? Artist Studio/Family Collection. Image size: 10 x 10 cm.; framed: 45 x 45 cm. PICTURES AND PRINTS Approximate Time 14:44:44
Sheppards
Dec. 06, 2023
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) The Garry Bog, Portrush, (1958) Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 76.5cm (20 x 30) Signed; also signed, inscribed and dated 'Portrush, August 1958 verso' Provenance: With John Magee Gallery, Belfast (label verso); Priva
Est: €10,000 - €15,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) The Garry Bog, Portrush, (1958) Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 76.5cm (20 x 30) Signed; also signed, inscribed and dated 'Portrush, August 1958 verso' Provenance: With John Magee Gallery, Belfast (label verso); Private Collection Exhibited: Dublin, Ritchie Hendrick's Gallery, October 1958, Paintings by Colin Middleton, cat. no.14; Belfast, John Magee Gallery, November 1962, Colin Middleton: Paintings 1940-1962, cat. no.31 (exhibited as The Garry Bog I) The second half of the 1950s was a time of transition for Colin Middleton in a number of ways. After six intense years, he and his dealer Victor Waddington had stopped working together in 1955 and that year Middleton took a job as art master at Coleraine Technical College. Having exhibited successfully in Dublin, London and America in the early 1950s, Middleton now had no outlet for his paintings for several years, although he continued to work regularly. The north coast provided a very different landscape from that of County Down, which had inspired many of the works shown with Waddington, and this move turned out to be as liberating and as influential as the move to Strangford had been in 1949. Middleton was always extremely sensitive towards individual places, responding not only to their visual appearance but also to mood, a particular effect of light or weather and even to aspects of the physical and geological structure. The development of Middletons work in the late 1950s is a revealing insight into the transition from the colourful expressionist paintings that preceded them to the more austere and abstracted manner that dominated the 1960s. The Garry Bog, based on an area just outside Ballymoney, demonstrates the meeting-point of these styles. It retains the energetic paint surface of earlier works, with rhythmically swirling brushstrokes in the foreground and dabs of dramatic autumnal colour, while introducing a more stylised treatment of the sky and using repeated simplified forms of turf and rocks to lead the eye through to the high-toned fields on the horizon. The new direction in Middletons work was demonstrated in two substantial solo exhibitions, his first with Ritchie Hendriks in Dublin in 1958, and an exhibition with the Magee Gallery in 1962; the present painting was included in both of these.
Adam's
Dec. 06, 2023
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Opus 1 no. 49 (Group IV The Oracle, 1942) Oil on canvas, 75.5 x 50cm (29¾ x 19½) Signed and dated October 1942; Signed, inscribed with title and dated 11 October 1942 verso Provenance: The McClelland C
Est: €15,000 - €25,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Opus 1 no. 49 (Group IV The Oracle, 1942) Oil on canvas, 75.5 x 50cm (29¾ x 19½) Signed and dated October 1942; Signed, inscribed with title and dated 11 October 1942 verso Provenance: The McClelland Collection and on loan to IMMA from 1999-2004; Sale, these rooms, Dublin 31 May 2006, lot no. 69; Private Collection; Sale, these rooms, Dublin 6 December 2010, lot no. 121. Exhibited: Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 'Northern Artists from the McClelland Collection', January/February 2005; Droichead Arts Centre, 'Northern Artists from the McClelland Collection' Literature: 'The Hunter Gatherer- The Collection of George and Maura McClelland at The Irish Museum of Modern Art', full page illustrations p. 69 On occasions the impact of Colin Middleton's realist painting can be dulled by excess, but 'The Oracle' presents us with a starkness and coherence of the central figure and the landscape that is striking. This landscape is dominated by a near-monochromatic group of clouds that float against a cold grey-blue sky, peaceful yet unnatural and slightly disturbing. The strange prehistoric creature confronting the viewer has human attributes sprinkled across its unwieldy body in simply indicated form, recognisably female in a manner we know from Picasso. The form to the left is more ambiguous, a sundial that could be a companion of some sort and which has suggestions of masculinity. Throughout Middleton's work, the female figure is almost invariably the stronger and more dominant element of a composition and here it traps us on the edge of land, barring our way. He often depicts the female archetype as a part of the natural order that sits outside time and change, holding the key to understanding, and this painting could suggest an interpretation along these lines, although the title alone is sufficient warning of the problems of trying to solve such mysteries. Dickon Hall.
Adam's
Sep. 27, 2023
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) 'East Lynne or Lady Isabel's Shame' (1967) Mixed media, 78.4 x 28.5cm (31 x 11¼) Provenance: From the collection of the late Sandra Perry Sandra Perry was the producer of the 1967 production of the pla
Est: €800 - €1,200
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) 'East Lynne or Lady Isabel's Shame' (1967) Mixed media, 78.4 x 28.5cm (31 x 11¼) Provenance: From the collection of the late Sandra Perry Sandra Perry was the producer of the 1967 production of the play based on Mrs Henry Wood's novel from 1861. The play ran from December 6th to 16th at the Circle Theatre, New Lodge Road, Belfast. Colin Middleton is known to have produced a number of theatrical posters of which this is a rare example.
Adam's
Jun. 06, 2023
COLIN MIDDLETON MBE, BRITISH 1910-1983 - UNTITLED; INK, WAX CRAYON AND RESIST TECHNIQUE ON PAPE
Est: £400 - £600
Colin Middleton MBE, British 1910-1983 - Untitled; ink, wax crayon and resist technique on paper, signed and dedicated on a label attached to the reverse of the frame, 8.2 x 8 cm (ARR)
Roseberys
May. 31, 2023
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) Landscape with Houses, c.1953 Oil on canvas, 27.9 x 33cm (11 x 13) Signed Middletons work of this period, in the early to mid- 1950s is dominated by landscapes painted in broad and expressive brus
Est: €6,000 - €8,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) Landscape with Houses, c.1953 Oil on canvas, 27.9 x 33cm (11 x 13) Signed Middletons work of this period, in the early to mid- 1950s is dominated by landscapes painted in broad and expressive brushstrokes. Moving into the 1960s his work would become more linear, developing an abstracted architectural language. This work employs the loose and free application of paint, as he works quickly across the canvas. Middleton uses the paint, thickly applied, to enhance the surface of the painting and bringing it to life. There is a clear sense of atmosphere and movement in the landscape. Looking at the work, we feel as if we are standing outside on clear spring day looking down over the houses below and we can almost imagine a gust of wind blowing through the leaves of the trees. The bright and open landscape, with the green foliage on either side of the foreground opens up to reveal a wonderful yellow road leading us to the houses in the distance. The houses themselves are more regulated in form, as white boxes with grey slate roofs, while the landscape surrounding them is full of energy and colour. There is an intensity to the landscape paintings of this period, filled with vibrancy and a celebration of the environment around him. Niamh Corcoran, April 2023
Adam's
May. 10, 2023
COLIN MIDDLETON (1910 - 1983)
Est: €400 - €800
Study of a lady. Monogramed pencil sketch. Framed. Provenance: From the artist's family by descent. (Lot 820)
Sheppards
Mar. 29, 2023
Â§ COLIN MIDDLETON, R.H.A. (IRISH, 1910â1983)
Est: £12,000 - £18,000
Â§ COLIN MIDDLETON, R.H.A. (IRISH, 1910â1983) COLIN MIDDLETON, R.H.A. (IRISH, 1910â1983) The Steps, Ardglass signed 'Colin M' (lower right); further signed and titled 'The Steps, Ardglass/by/Colin Middleton' (on a label attached to the frame) oil on canvas 66 x 76.3 cm. (26 x 30 in.) Painted in 1949 Provenance Acquired by the family of the present owner, circa 1960, thence by descent Exhibited Dublin, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, 1950 Dublin, Victor Waddington Gallery, April 1953, cat.no.21 ARR Colin Middleton moved to Ardglass from Belfast in the summer of 1949. The previous December he had been taken on as a gallery artist by the Dublin dealer Victor Waddington and the Â£40 per month he received as an advance against sales had allowed Middleton to make a decisive break from his previous career as a damask designer. Although he only remained in Ardglass until late in 1952 it was a period of immense significance for Middleton. Having achieved early recognition in Belfast, culminating in a solo exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1943, it was in the late 1940s and generally under the auspices of Waddington that he began to exhibit consistently in Dublin and London as well as in group exhibitions in the USA and Europe. By 1949 Middleton was working in the expressionist manner that he had evolved through the second part of the decade and which dominated his work until 1960; in the landscape around Ardglass and the daily life of its fishing community he found ideal subjects for this intense and dramatic way of working. Images of Ardglass itself are rare in Middletonâs work and, like Landscape with a Red Gable (also 1949), The Steps: Ardglass transforms the town with an edgy intensity, an almost hallucinatory light and slightly tilted perspective. The impact of the van Gogh exhibition Middleton saw in London in 1928 is still clear two decades later, but the dynamic brushwork and strong colour of The Steps: Ardglass remains carefully organised and strongly individual. The painting was included in the 1950 Irish Exhibition of Living Art and noted in the Dublin Magazine. Widely regarded today as one of the leading Irish painters of the twentieth century, and represented in public collections across Ireland as well as in England and Australia, these years in Ardglass undoubtedly remain a crucial period in Middletonâs life, during which some of his most notable work was painted. On a train journey through England in 1954, Middleton wrote âthe entire landscape looks very ordinary after living in Ardglass and Ballymoteâ. We are grateful to Dickon Hall for compiling this catalogue entry.
Chiswick Auctions
Mar. 06, 2023
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) DARK LADY, 1976
Est: €25,000 - €35,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) DARK LADY, 1976 oil on board signed lower right; signed, titled and dated on reverse h:24 w:24 in. Provenance: Lad Lane Gallery, Dublin, 1981; Private collection; Eakin Gallery, Belfast; Private collection Completed in 1976, The Dark Lady is one of the later works that relate to, and develop ideas from Colin Middleton's extended Wilderness Series. As with much of Middleton's work the Wilderness Series, mostly painted between 1972 and 1974, brings together various inspirations and ideas that relate to his life at that time as well as continuing themes from throughout his career. Although Middleton acknowledged that the early days of the Troubles, when he was still living in Belfast, had brought back a surrealist influence into his work, much as he had experienced during the period of the Blitz of Belfast almost three decades earlier, much of the iconography in the Wilderness Series was clearly derived from the long sea voyage he undertook with his wife to Australia in 1972. After a period in which the Irish landscape had dominated Middleton's work, the Wilderness Series revisited the female archetype that had remained at the heart of his painting since the 1930s. The Dark Lady shares with the Wilderness Series its sense of a vast but undefined space, recalling Middleton's time in Australia and on board ship, with imagery that also remains ambiguous. There is an emphasis on texture, which might be connected with Middleton's design background, a source of ideas and possibilities that he often returned to in the 1960s and 1970s. The Westerness Series developed certain elements of the Wilderness Series but introduced elements of folklore, myth and legend that found their embodiment in the female archetype, as in The Dark Lady. It is notable that Middleton used the subtitle 'Transmutations Metamorphoses Visitations' for an exhibition in 1977. The figure in the present painting seems in her texture and shapes to be part of the structure around her, as if she is metamorphosing into a female shape but occupies another sphere; the female archetype seems to have remained crucial for Middleton as he saw it as so multi-faceted, related to all aspects of our environment: the natural world, the spiritual and mystical world and a more personal reality. Dickon Hall February 2023
Whyte's
Mar. 01, 2023
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Mourne Landscape (1974) Oil on board, 45 x 45cm (17¾ x 17¾) Signed, inscribed and dated 1974 verso
Est: €7,000 - €10,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Mourne Landscape (1974) Oil on board, 45 x 45cm (17¾ x 17¾) Signed, inscribed and dated 1974 verso
Adam's
Mar. 01, 2023
Colin Middleton RUA RHA Figure in Landscape (1971) Oil on board, 61 x 61cm (24 x 24) Signed; also inscribed with title and dated 1971 verso Provenance: With David Hendrik's Gallery, Dublin, January 1973; Collection R. W. Wilson, Dublin, E
Est: €8,000 - €12,000
Colin Middleton RUA RHA Figure in Landscape (1971) Oil on board, 61 x 61cm (24 x 24) Signed; also inscribed with title and dated 1971 verso Provenance: With David Hendrik's Gallery, Dublin, January 1973; Collection R. W. Wilson, Dublin, Exhibited: Ulster Museum, Colin Middleton Retrospective, 1976, Cat. No. 134
Adam's
Mar. 01, 2023
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Striped Figure Oil on board, 90 x 90cm (36 x36) Signed and dated August (19)71; Signed, inscribed and dated 1971 verso The single female figure is a recurring image within Colin Middletons work a
Est: €20,000 - €30,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Striped Figure Oil on board, 90 x 90cm (36 x36) Signed and dated August (19)71; Signed, inscribed and dated 1971 verso The single female figure is a recurring image within Colin Middletons work and the main archetype amongst the range of enduring symbols that populate all periods of his work and demonstrate his consistency and seriousness of intent. Often these single figures carry with them some suggestion of narrative through their environment, activity or title, but in the 1960s Middleton adopts an increasingly analytical and detached aspect in much of his painting as a more formal abstraction becomes dominant, which continues until the early 1970s in works such as Striped Figure. Middletons association with the architect Noel Campbell, who commissioned him to produce mosaics and murals for various new buildings in the late 1950s, was perhaps a catalyst for Middleton to re-examine how he could integrate design within his painting. In 1947, the year he gave up his career as a damask designer, he described in a latter to John Hewitt how he perceived design and painting as separate aspects of his creative identity but by the late 1960s Middleton seems to have found a way to integrate elements of design into his painting, originally exploring a more abstract language based on a simplification and flattening of form and perspective, repetition of shapes and a non-imitative use of colour. By the 1970s these figures had become more descriptive, while still highly abstracted, more playful and at times more sexualised in their treatment. Striped Figure, completed in 1971, is typically hieratic and concentrated on the figure. It uses stripes and broken up, dotted passages across the composition. The figure is treated ambitiously, creating a sense of volume and tension by extrapolating and then overlaying various simplified elements of the body, which are defined in opposing stripes and colours. Formally, it is also closely related to the chair, whose dark leg relates to the background of the painting as well as the dark vertical of the figures hair, recalling the manner in which Middleton would make structural and thematic connections between the female archetype and the landscape in many works. Dickon Hall, January 2023
Adam's
Mar. 01, 2023
Colin Middleton RUA RHA (1910 - 1983) Seated Figure with Yellow Coffee Pot (1972) Oil on board, 92 x 91cm (36 x 36) Signed; also signed, inscribed with title and dated 1972 verso Provenance: With David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, January 1973; C
Est: €20,000 - €30,000
Colin Middleton RUA RHA (1910 - 1983) Seated Figure with Yellow Coffee Pot (1972) Oil on board, 92 x 91cm (36 x 36) Signed; also signed, inscribed with title and dated 1972 verso Provenance: With David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, January 1973; Collection R. W. Wilson, Dublin The early 1970s was a period of significant recognition for Colin Middleton. He held a number of exhibitions with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in the 1960s, culminating in a major retrospective covering the decade 1960-1970 that toured in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Middleton was also awarded a bursary by the Arts Council that allowed him to retire from teaching and to undertake some journeys that became highly significant to the development of his art at this time, first to Australia and then to Barcelona. Seated Figure with Yellow Coffee Pot appears to have been completed shortly before Colin and Kathleen Middleton departed on the long sea voyage to Australia which was partially to inspire the Wilderness Series of paintings. It continues aspects of his figure painting from the 1960s but the complexity and concentration of Middletons development also means that it foreshadows the last decade of his figure painting and connects with later paintings that are often seen as emerging from his visits to Barcelona, where his daughter Jane was living. This is particularly notable in the yellow that dominates the painting and recalls a group of paintings inspired by a visit to Bruges in 1965, while also prefiguring the dramatic use of high-pitched colour in Middletons later work, which was primarily influenced by the light of Spain and Australia. There is a classical division of the picture space, and shapes that form the female figure are repeated in the coffee pot, creating movement across the composition. The figure appears to be writing, introducing a suggestion of narrative that connects it with paintings in the 1960s of Middletons wife and daughters quietly engaged in activities such as reading or playing the piano. This painting also demonstrates the crucial role that Middletons design training and experience came to play in his art, with patterning and decoration creating balance and activity around the picture space and allowing the artist to maintain an ambiguous and almost mysterious mood without overbalancing it with the description of specific objects within the composition. Dickon Hall, January 2023
Adam's
Dec. 07, 2022
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Slievenisky Sky (55) Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm (20 x 24) Signed Exhibited: Dublin, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, 1949, catalogue number 50
Est: €8,000 - €12,000
Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Slievenisky Sky (55) Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm (20 x 24) Signed Exhibited: Dublin, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, 1949, catalogue number 50
Adam's
Nov. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) TIERRA DEL FUEGO: THE WILDERNESS OF FIORENZA COSSOTTO, 1972-74
Est: €30,000 - €50,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) TIERRA DEL FUEGO: THE WILDERNESS OF FIORENZA COSSOTTO, 1972-74 oil on board signed lower right; signed, titled, dated and with Tom Caldwell Gallery and Arts Council of Northern Ireland labels on reverse h:24 w:24 in. Provenance: Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast; Private collection; de Veres, 20 April 2009, lot 37; Private collection Exhibited: 'Colin Middleton: Wilderness Series, Northern Hemisphere and Barcelona, 1972-74', Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast, catalogue no. 26; 'Colin Middleton', Ulster Museum, Belfast / Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1976, catalogue no. 150 Literature: John Hewitt, Colin Middleton, Arts Council of Northern Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaion, Belfast, 1976, p.45 (illustrated) The 1970s were a decade of recognition for Colin Middleton, with two major retrospective loan exhibitions, the publication of a monograph by John Hewitt and the award of an MBE, and it also seems to have provided him with a period for reassessment. Partly thanks to a bursary awarded by the Arts Council he was able to give up teaching and to paint full-time for the first time since the mid-1950s and this also allowed him time for travel, which had always been an important stimulus in his work. The Wilderness Series is arguably the most important of the extensive series of works on which he embarked in this decade, revisiting his interest in surrealism and also integrating many aspects of his early training and work in design with his mature painting. They are complicated works, full of autobiographical references as well as technical experimentation. While they clearly relate to the long sea journeys Middleton undertook to visit two of his daughters, to Australia in 1972 to see Alison and then to Spain in 1974 to visit Jane, the concept of the wilderness also represented metaphysical ideas that were important to Middleton in the gestation of this series of paintings. Discussing his idea of the wilderness 'in its Biblical sense - a place to which the soul withdraws from the immediate urgency of clocks and calendars to rediscover the continuum of survival', Middleton also seems to refer in the present work to his own journey on the Southern Cross through the dramatic perspective of the wooden planks that recall the deck of a ship as much as the desk in this image. There is also perhaps an autobiographical allusion to damask design in the roll of fabric; it is arguably in the Wilderness Series that Middleton began to most obviously absorb aspects of design into his creative identity, having rejected it in the 1940s. Middleton also introduces into these paintings a bewildering range of references to cultural and sporting heroes, from Banjo Patterson, Kirsten Flagstad and Eddie Merckx to Fiorenze Cossotto in the present work, so that these works become not only increasingly personal but also full of cultural and contemporary references that almost seem at odds with the longing for escape into a personal wilderness. It is intriguing to see the composition of this painting in the context of Middleton's own recollection that this series was influenced by seeing advertising hoardings set up in the middle of some of the barren landscapes through which he was driven on these journeys, a strange disjunction of consumer culture and ancient landscapes where escape and the survival of the soul might have been sought, and as unexpected a connection as Tierra del Fuego and the mezzo soprano Fiorenza Cossotto. Dickon Hall, November 2022
Whyte's
Nov. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE PARK: COLERAINE, 1956
Est: €25,000 - €35,000
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE PARK: COLERAINE, 1956 oil on canvas signed lower left; signed, titled, dated [June], numbered [218] and with Tom Caldwell Gallery label on reverse h:26 w:30 in. Exhibited: 'Paintings by Colin Middleton', Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, October 1958, catalogue no. 13; 'Colin Middleton: Paintings 1940-1962', Magee Gallery, Belfast, catalogue no. 19 In 1955 Colin Middleton moved to Portrush, taking up a post at Coleraine Technical Institute only a few years after having written of his reluctance to become a teacher. Having been enabled to paint full-time by Victor Waddington's support while he was showing with his gallery in Dublin, by 1954 Middleton was rarely in touch with his dealer and appears to have stopped sending him new work, ending a period of great achievement and progress for Middleton. It is notable, however, that Middleton's work during this period between 1953 and 1958 does not seem to have been affected by his precarious professional and financial situation. Continuing the expressionist style of painting Middleton had developed at the end of the previous decade, The Park, Coleraine begins to establish a more abstract rendering of forms that anticipates Middleton's less representational work in the 1960s. The heightened use of local colour matches the repeated stylised shapes to create an intense and vivid pattern across the canvas and maintains the exuberance of Middleton's north Down landscapes of the mid-1950s. The figures sitting in the park play a compositional role but also provide a sense of human activity and some narrative interest. Again, it often seems to have been at difficult times that Middleton expressed this sense of kinship with others through his work and an evocation of the quiet pleasures of daily life that is quite different from the powerful and passionate figures that occur in his paintings from the late 1940s and 1950s. Dickon Hall, October 2022
Whyte's
Nov. 08, 2022
COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) UNTITLED Pencil on paper, 20.5 x 13.5cm Signed with monogram
Est: €400 - €600
COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) UNTITLED Pencil on paper, 20.5 x 13.5cm Signed with monogram and dated (19)’75
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Exotic Creature Screenprint, 17 x 10cm (6¾ x 4¾) Signed, inscribed Rossmoyne, dated, (19)72, and numbered 32/50
Est: €200 - €300
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Exotic Creature Screenprint, 17 x 10cm (6¾ x 4¾) Signed, inscribed Rossmoyne, dated, (19)72, and numbered 32/50
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Annunciation Pencil, 25.5 x 17.5cm (10 x 6¾) Signed with monogram
Est: €600 - €800
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Annunciation Pencil, 25.5 x 17.5cm (10 x 6¾) Signed with monogram
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Kate Playing the Piano Pencil, 14 x 11.5cm (5½ x 4½) Signed with monogram, inscribed 'K' and dated 6 June (19)'74
Est: €400 - €600
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Kate Playing the Piano Pencil, 14 x 11.5cm (5½ x 4½) Signed with monogram, inscribed 'K' and dated 6 June (19)'74
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Kate Reading Pen and Indian ink, 18 x 13.6cm (7 x 5) Signed with monogram and dated 12 March (19)'75
Est: €300 - €500
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Kate Reading Pen and Indian ink, 18 x 13.6cm (7 x 5) Signed with monogram and dated 12 March (19)'75
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Drumrush, Figure with Bird Pencil, 8.3 x 8.3cm (3¼ x 3¼) Signed with monogram, inscribed and dated 24 July (19)'68
Est: €300 - €500
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Drumrush, Figure with Bird Pencil, 8.3 x 8.3cm (3¼ x 3¼) Signed with monogram, inscribed and dated 24 July (19)'68
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Female Figure Pencil, 8.3 x 8.3cm (3¼ x 3¼) Signed with monogram and dated 23 July, (19)68
Est: €300 - €500
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Female Figure Pencil, 8.3 x 8.3cm (3¼ x 3¼) Signed with monogram and dated 23 July, (19)68
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Female Figure in Landscape Pencil, 15.5 x 17.5cm (6 x 7) Signed with monogram and dated 11 July (19)'46
Est: €600 - €800
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Female Figure in Landscape Pencil, 15.5 x 17.5cm (6 x 7) Signed with monogram and dated 11 July (19)'46
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) The Harvest Moon Pencil, 16.5 x 17.5cm (6½ x 6¾) Inscribed and dated 14 Jan, (19)44
Est: €500 - €700
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) The Harvest Moon Pencil, 16.5 x 17.5cm (6½ x 6¾) Inscribed and dated 14 Jan, (19)44
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Dancing Figure Pencil, 16 x 12.5cm (6¼ x 5) Signed with monogram and dated 16 May, (19)45; Together with another sketch of the same subject Unframed, attached verso
Est: €500 - €700
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Dancing Figure Pencil, 16 x 12.5cm (6¼ x 5) Signed with monogram and dated 16 May, (19)45; Together with another sketch of the same subject Unframed, attached verso
Adam's
Sep. 28, 2022
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Mother and Child - Study for EL Nene I Pencil, 19 x 13cm (7½ x 5) Dated 23 April, (19)75 A COLLECTION OF ten WORKS ON PAPER BY COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RHA RUA (lots 23 - 32) From the earlie
Est: €600 - €800
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983) Mother and Child - Study for EL Nene I Pencil, 19 x 13cm (7½ x 5) Dated 23 April, (19)75 A COLLECTION OF ten WORKS ON PAPER BY COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RHA RUA (lots 23 - 32) From the earliest stages of his career, drawing was central to Colin Middletons art. His training and work in the rigorous discipline of damask design was the basis of his remarkable technical skill, but it also seems to have been in drawing that Middletons visual imagination found its freest expression, and the ideas that dominate his paintings are often initially explored in his sketchbooks. Middleton chose to exhibit works on paper in exhibitions throughout his career, including his 1976 retrospective, and even held one exhibition completely devoted to drawings. This group of works ranges across Middletons career and includes many of the themes most significant to him. A number of drawings from the 1940s almost certainly relate to ideas for paintings, although only one, Harvest Moon, is identified. In various ways they explore the idea of the female archetype that remained a consistent element in Middletons work, associated with ideas of generation and regeneration and a harmonious relationship with the natural world. Intriguingly one drawing also suggests the Annunciation or a similar subject; Biblical references recur frequently in Middletons work until the late 1950s. Two drawings from the 1960s develop the idea of the female archetype, locating the landscape and the figure within the same stylised and abstracted image, creating an inventive formal ambiguity. They suggest the physical identity of certain landscapes as well as their history and mythology, and it is notable that the Drumrush drawing also includes a bird, a significant symbol for Middleton that was often used in conjunction with the female figure and that re-emerged in a series of paintings in the late 1960s. The drawings of Middletons wife, Kathleen, demonstrate two different aspects of his drawing, one full of subtle tonal shifts as she plays the piano, again a notable subject in Middletons later work, and the other a more swiftly delineated, linear study of Kate reading. They both travelled to Australia in the early 1970s as part of a trip around the world, and stayed with their daughter Alison, and the light and scale of the landscape, as well as the influence of Aboriginal art, inspired a series of watercolours and some graphic work, including this lithograph which Middleton seems to have developed from a drawing illustrated in John Hewitts 1976 monograph. Middletons interest in printmaking in the 1970s was perhaps partly due to his son John, a highly talented artist who had just returned from London where he had studied printmaking at the Royal College of Art. Middleton was arguably one of the greatest draughtsmen in Irish art, but beyond the skill and inventiveness of his drawings they also remain significant as so many of the original ideas for his paintings were explored and resolved in this form and in some cases exist only as drawings.
Adam's

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