Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Winter Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 91.5cm (24¼ x 36'') Signed and dated 1938 'Winter' is part of the earliest group of extant paintings by Colin Middleton but...

Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Winter Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 91.5cm (24¼ x 36'') Signed and dated 1938 'Winter' is part of the earliest group of extant paintings by Colin Middleton but it already shows him fully formed as an artist. At this period, Middleton would still have been working full time as a linen designer and this consciousness of fabric is present at various stages in his career. In the present painting the description of the static female figure becomes indistinguishable from the material that extends across her legs to the second set of steps. This strange artificial setting, a mock domestic interior on the edge of a barren wasteland is consistent with the suggestion of this figure frozen in time and almost losing her physical reality as she metamorphoses into ambiguous immateriality, absent as much as she is present. While the elements of the composition reflect Middleton's interest in surrealism and its relationship with the ideas of Jung, the archetypes that dominate this series of work also echo the desolate, sterile landscapes and alienation of T.S. Eliot's 'dessication of the world of sense', as well as the post-war paintings of Nevill Johnson. Parallels between the female figure and this landscape are at the heart of the work. The foreground space she occupies is connected with the rocks set out at sea through a repetition of shapes, yet the sense of rebirth and fecundity this natural interconnection often suggests in Middleton's work is definitely absent here. Perhaps this painting echoes the uneasy mood of Europe in the year before the beginning of the Second World War, but it is possible that there might be a more personal meaning as Middleton's first wife became ill around this time. Dickon Hall

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