Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Girl with Owl (1951) Oil on canvas, 75 x 64cm (29½ x 25¼'') Signed. Signed again, inscribed with title and dated February/March 1951. (AR 108) Exhibited:...

Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Girl with Owl (1951) Oil on canvas, 75 x 64cm (29½ x 25¼'') Signed. Signed again, inscribed with title and dated February/March 1951. (AR 108) Exhibited: 'Colin Middleton Paintings 1947 - 1952', Tooth Gallery, London, October/November 1952, Cat. No. 14 'Colin Middleton Retrospective' September 1954, organised by CEMA Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, Cat. No. 18 Literature: John Hewitt, 'Colin Middleton', Arts Council, 1976, illustrated p.21 'Girl with an Owl' belongs to the years Colin Middleton described as his 'Ardglass / Ballymote' period and it exemplifies the intensely emotional but often ambiguous quality of his work at this time. While it belongs to the same group of paintings of female figures in a landscape as 'Hallowe'en' and 'Girl with Sunflowers', the presence of the bird alongside the figure connects the painting with a theme that recurs throughout Middleton's career. Middleton uses the female archetype both as a part of the landscape and also, as in the present painting, as its visual embodiment. Here the use of colour connects the figure, bird and landscape, but most striking of all is the curve of the moon that is mirrored in the eyes of the owl. This girl has her own identity (with a suggestion that she is holding a piece of paper, perhaps a letter) but she also expresses the sense of the primeval power and wildness Middleton finds within the landscape and the natural world around Ardglass. The shapes and tones of her face are repeated in aspects of the owl's head and the bird's claws are noticeably the same shapes as the girl's fingers. The bird acts almost as a familiar to the female figure in Middleton's work, perhaps suggesting innate connections with the natural world or else the purely spiritual aspect of womanhood. Middleton portrays many different types of birds, but it is interesting that he returned to the subject of a girl with an owl in the 1960s. While there are a variety of interpretations of the owl's symbolic role in the painting, it is possible that he intended it to suggest the girl is endowed with an instinctive wisdom and understanding beyond the physical world we inhabit. This is an uncompromisingly powerful image that embodies the mood of the Ardglass period and contains many of the ideas that were central to Middleton's work. Clearly he considered it an important work as the painting was reproduced in John Hewitt's 1976 monograph on the artist (along with a preparatory study towards it) and it was also included in the original list that Middleton drew up by hand of the works he considered for inclusion in the touring retrospective exhibition held in that year. Dickon Hall, March 2014

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