73
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983)
Estimate:
€20,000 - €30,000
Sold
€42,000
Live Auction
Irish & International Art
Size
48 by 48in. (121.9 by 121.9cm)
Description
Title: WOMAN WITH BIRDS, 1981
Note: This is possibly the last version of a subject that was central to Colin Middleton throughout his career. Although the first paintings in the Woman with Bird series were completed in the early 1960s, one could look back to a number of paintings from the wartime period through to the early 1950s that contain similar subject matter. Whereas these often use a broader narrative and more wide-ranging iconography, as the series evolved in the 1960s there is an increasing concentration upon the female figure and one or more birds within a more austere and abstracted composition. A number of this series leave visible similar areas of unpainted board, although this particular work is unusually colourful and patterned. Travel had always had a strong impact on Middleton and in the 1970s he was able to give up teaching after fifteen years and spend time in Australia and Barcelona, as well as seeing South America, all of which influenced the last decade of his painting in various ways, including the use of more high-toned and contrasting colour. Pattern also becomes a regular aspect of these later paintings, perhaps indicating that Middleton was looking back to his early career as a damask designer and finding a way to integrate pattern in an abstract or decorative manner within his works and even as an element of their meaning. While much has been written on the importance of the female archetype within Middleton's work, the symbolic nature of the bird that recurs so regularly in proximity to the female figure has been discussed less. The implication of their joint presence within so many works is that the two are closely linked. The idea that the bird might represent a spiritual dimension of the female archetype whose physical parallel is the woman within these paintings is perhaps reinforced by the range of its use within a diverse range of works, even those such as If I Were A Blackbird where there is no bird within the painting and the reference suggests a spiritual existence beyond the material world depicted.Dickon Hall,August 2019
Note: This is possibly the last version of a subject that was central to Colin Middleton throughout his career. Although the first paintings in the Woman with Bird series were completed in the early 1960s, one could look back to a number of paintings from the wartime period through to the early 1950s that contain similar subject matter. Whereas these often use a broader narrative and more wide-ranging iconography, as the series evolved in the 1960s there is an increasing concentration upon the female figure and one or more birds within a more austere and abstracted composition. A number of this series leave visible similar areas of unpainted board, although this particular work is unusually colourful and patterned. Travel had always had a strong impact on Middleton and in the 1970s he was able to give up teaching after fifteen years and spend time in Australia and Barcelona, as well as seeing South America, all of which influenced the last decade of his painting in various ways, including the use of more high-toned and contrasting colour. Pattern also becomes a regular aspect of these later paintings, perhaps indicating that Middleton was looking back to his early career as a damask designer and finding a way to integrate pattern in an abstract or decorative manner within his works and even as an element of their meaning. While much has been written on the importance of the female archetype within Middleton's work, the symbolic nature of the bird that recurs so regularly in proximity to the female figure has been discussed less. The implication of their joint presence within so many works is that the two are closely linked. The idea that the bird might represent a spiritual dimension of the female archetype whose physical parallel is the woman within these paintings is perhaps reinforced by the range of its use within a diverse range of works, even those such as If I Were A Blackbird where there is no bird within the painting and the reference suggests a spiritual existence beyond the material world depicted.Dickon Hall,August 2019
Medium
oil on panel
Signature
signed with monogram lower right; signed, titled and dated on reverse
