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:...

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

 

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