Colin Middleton RHA MBE (1910-1983)

The highly respected Irish landscape artist, figure painter and Surrealist* Colin Middleton was born in Belfast in 1910. While he was learning painting and drawing at Belfast College of Art, he was heavily influenced by the work of the Dutch Expressionist Vincent van Gogh. A deep thinker as well as a modern artist, Middleton's early work contained non-naturalistic use of colour as well as symbolist* even surrealist imagery, leading him to regard himself as the only Surrealist working in Ireland in the 1930s. His paintings first appeared at the Royal Hibernian Academy* (RHA) in 1938, although perhaps because of his modern approach to art he only gained associate membership in 1969 and full membership in 1970.

In 1943, the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery arranged a vast, comprehensive one-man exhibition for Middleton - at the time the largest solo show seen. The following year, he held his first solo exhibition in Dublin at the Grafton Gallery in 1944. After this, he devoted himself full-time to painting. More exhibitions followed in Dublin, London and Boston. Post-war images of the Nazi death-camps was a strong influence behind the emotional content of some of Middleton's greatest paintings. Another response to the war, was to look inwards, and his work in the early 1940s shows a new affection for Belfast life in his genre-paintings of street scenes.

In 1953, Colin Middleton moved to Bangor where he designed numerous theatre sets. He also exhibited alongside Daniel O'Neill at the Tooth Galleries in London. However, the later 1950's were uncertain years. He was no longer represented by Victor Waddington Galleries, with whom he had succeeded in the post-war years, and he also moved to Portrush, County Antrim, on the north coast. It was here that he began a parallel career as an art teacher that was to endure for the next 20 years. These changes coincided with shifts in Middleton's painting, as he renewed and strengthened his interest in abstract* art in which the theoretical use of colour began to dominate.

A poet and musician, Colin Middleton also produced a vast range of other artwork such as murals, mosaics and posters. In 1969 he was awarded an MBE and appointed AHRA at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), with full membership in 1970.

A major Colin Middleton retrospective was held in 1976, at the Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. He continued to exhibit at the RHA until his death in 1983.

Source:
Online Encyclopedia of Irish and World Art
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/irish-artists/colin-middleton.htm

* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx

Colin Middleton's work in the 1970s was dominated by two major groups of paintings, the Wilderness Series and the Westerness Series. These can both, in part, be seen as a summary of his career, bringing together various ideas, themes and symbols, as well as very personal references from across five decades, into a distilled and coherent body of paintings. Matinée, which relates closely to both groups, was completed towards the end of this period and was exhibited in an exhibition subtitled 'Transmutations, Metamorphoses, Visitations'. These three concepts, which were central to Middleton's early symbolist and surrealist work in the 1930s and 1940s, are skillfully explored in Matinée; the twisted rock-like form in the foreground recalls the remarkable paint surface Middleton achieved in the Westerness series to create elusive and shifting textured shapes which, as here, could suggest either the solidity of rock or else fabric draped across a mysterious and abstracted female form. Around this strange arch takes place a colourful scene that is more reminiscent of the Wilderness series. Two doll-like female figures seem to be engaged in a performance with two boxes, one solid, the other weightless, with the higher figure also tethered to an invisible object just beyond the view we are permitted. The vast sky and what appears to be a wooden deck-like structure occur in many of the Wilderness paintings and are perhaps a reference to the extensive sea journeys Middleton took earlier in the decade. These travels to Spain, Australia and South America stimulated his use of colour in the 1970s, as well as providing a new vocabulary of shapes and an expansive sense of scale in his landscapes. While his paintings of this period continue Middleton's symbolic interests, they also marked a re-engagement with Surrealism. In addition, paintings such as Matinée reveal unexpected new influences, such as advertising hoardings placed in the middle of a field or on a mountain, which appealed to him as social comment as well as for the visually striking juxtapositions they suggested. Dickon Hall, March 2019