Kieran O'Boyle
Head of Ireland & Northen Ireland
Lot 8
Colin Middleton R.H.A.(Irish, 1910-1983)Abstracted figure 30.5 x 15 cm. (12 x 6 in.)
17 – 28 November 2023, 14:00 GMT
DublinSold for €9,600 inc. premium
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Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
Colin Middleton R.H.A. (Irish, 1910-1983)
Abstracted figure
signed and dated 'Colin M. 1938.' (lower left)
oil on panel
30.5 x 15 cm. (12 x 6 in.)
signed and dated 'Colin M. 1938.' (lower left)
oil on panel
30.5 x 15 cm. (12 x 6 in.)
Footnotes
Provenance
Private Collection, Northern Ireland
In recent years, Colin Middleton's pre-war work has become better-known and has been seen in a new context that makes clear the significance of these rare early paintings and drawings. Middleton was engaging with Surrealism in an independent and highly assured manner at least three years before the International Surrealist Exhibition held in London in 1936; in 1939 John Hewitt described his work as 'of extreme revolutionary content' and there is arguably no other work being made in Ireland at that time to which it can be directly compared.
Despite his interest in Surrealism, the central focus of Middleton's work was around symbols, and this remained a constant throughout his career. In the catalogue for the 1934 Ulster Unit Exhibition, conceived in response to Unit One in England, Middleton described the basis of his work as 'Symbols – developed in accordance with either a spontaneously established law or some definite formal stimulus'.
The most constant symbol in his painting throughout Middleton's career is the female archetype, and this dynamic and almost unsettling treatment of the figure indicates the complexity of his formal approach to it. There are sculptural suggestions of three-dimensional form but the flat planes of black, red and blue and the rhythmic patterns of repeated abstract shapes around the composition, emphasise its post-Cubist abstraction and analysis of form.
Middleton destroyed most of his work in the summer of 1939, after the sudden death of his first wife, Maye. Only a handful of paintings survive, one of which, Head (National Museums Northern Ireland), is almost a pair of the present painting, on a board of the same dimensions and also, intriguingly, presented in a strikingly similar hand-made frame.
We are grateful to Dickon Hall for compiling this catalogue entry.
