Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Dark April Landscape (1954) Oil on canvas, 46 x 61cm (18 x 24'') Signed. Also signed, inscribed and dated verso Exhibited: 'Colin Middleton Loan Exhibition'...

Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983) Dark April Landscape (1954) Oil on canvas, 46 x 61cm (18 x 24'') Signed. Also signed, inscribed and dated verso Exhibited: 'Colin Middleton Loan Exhibition' C.E.M.A. at Ulster Museum 8th-25th Sept. 1954, Cat. No. 42 - Lent by the artist 'Colin Middleton Retrospective Exhibition (1939-1954)', 1955 Victor Waddington Galleries Cat. No. 34 priced at ?120.0.0 Colin Middleton's relationship to different landscapes nurtured his development as a painter to a degree perhaps surprising for someone whose upbringing had been in Belfast. This nurturing relationship was perhaps first developed in the early 1950s in the places Middleton painted around Ardglass, the first home in which his family settled and which in retrospect came to represent a period of great happiness. The commercial success of this period, during which Middleton was represented by the Waddington Gallery in Dublin, seems to have instilled a confidence in his work from which emerged the ambitious, expressionist style of these landscape paintings. In 'Dark Autumn Landscape' the paint surface full of movement and restless patterns, the intense colours jostle each other and the solidity of the buildings is threatened as the trees are dragged to the edge of the canvas and the sky seems to be colliding with the wave-like fields. While Middleton often used the human figure at this time to express the more troubling aspects of the mid-century, as well as the struggles of existence, the landscape almost invariably conveys a spiritual wholeness and wellbeing. While there is a passionate excitement for Middleton in these recently discovered places, there is also a sense of belonging that informs the paintings of other landscapes in which he was later to work. Dickon Hall, May 2007

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