33
Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983)
Estimate:
€15,000 - €20,000
Passed
Live Auction
Important Irish Art
Size
11 by 14in. (27.9 by 35.6cm)
Description
Title: FEMALE FIGURE AND PORTRAIT, 1941
Note: 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
Frame dimensions: 20.5 by 23.5in. (52.1 by 59.7cm)
Note: 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
Frame dimensions: 20.5 by 23.5in. (52.1 by 59.7cm)
Condition
Excellent condition.
Medium
oil on canvas
Signature
signed in monogram and dated upper centre
