Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Moonlit Hedge - Carnalridge (1960) Oil on canvas, 61 x 91cm (24 x 36'') Signed with artist's device, signed, inscribed with title and dated 1960 verso, No....

Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Moonlit Hedge - Carnalridge (1960) Oil on canvas, 61 x 91cm (24 x 36'') Signed with artist's device, signed, inscribed with title and dated 1960 verso, No. 257 Literature: Colin Middleton, Carlo Eastwood, illustrated p37 1960 was a prolific year for Colin Middleton, after a testing period from which few paintings survive. He had moved to Coleraine to take up a teaching post in 1955 and this new terrain seems gradually to have inspired him to work again. Much as Ardglass and the rolling landscape of North Down defined the mood of Middleton's work in the early 1950s, so Carnalridge provided a basis for exploring a more analytic and often harsher new voice that suited both the landscape and the artist as he moved into his fifties. The paintings from 1960 onward are in general much less literal in their description of place than those of the previous decade. This year alone produced a remarkable variety of work abstracting the landscape to different degrees and exploring the specific new elements of landscape that Middleton found here. Moonlit Hedge, Carnalridge is a pivotal work in Colin Middleton's career, marking the end of one period of work and signalling many of the changes that will be explored in his painting over the next two decades. Middleton searched in drawings for a language to define the motifs that he used to dominate these works (several studies in charcoal and a small oil study exist for the present work). The hedge is broken down into a rough and energetic mosaic of geometric shapes, while the horizon line and the loosely sketched sky provide some spatial clarity. Despite the hints of distance and perspective the picture space is almost entirely flattened and this as well as the more formal analysis suggests that Middleton was looking again at cubism, an undoubted influence on his early painting. Dicken Hall, March 2013

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