Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910 - 1983)
Judy
Oil on canvas, 59 x 45cm (23¼ x 17¾'')
Signed upper left;signed again, inscribed with title and dated 1954 verso (AR 188)

Exhibited Colin...

Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910 - 1983)
Judy
Oil on canvas, 59 x 45cm (23¼ x 17¾'')
Signed upper left;signed again, inscribed with title and dated 1954 verso (AR 188)

Exhibited Colin Middleton: Daniel ONeill Recent Paintings exhibition, Arthur Tooth and Co. London, May 1954, Cat. No. 10.

Judy was among a group of paintings Colin Middleton consigned to the Victor Waddington Galleries in Dublin in March 1954, by which stage his relationship with his dealer was at breaking point and he was considering looking for part-time work as a linen designer. Despite these difficulties, 1954 must have appeared to have been a year of great success for Middleton, with a two person show alongside Daniel ONeill at the Tooth Gallery in London and a major retrospective at the Belfast Museums Stranmillis Gallery in the autumn.

It was also a time at which Middleton was painting some of his most dynamic and intensely coloured landscapes, following his move from Ardglass to Bangor in January 1953. A number of paintings of young women around this time were perhaps Middletons response to his daughter Jane, who had been born in 1950, as well as to her two older half-sisters. It seems unlikely that this was a painting of a specific person, as Middleton generally seems to have depicted imagined or composite figures inspired by his general experience of a place and its inhabitants, rather than directly drawn from or inspired by a single person.

Judy is a painting of remarkable power that in its treatment of the young sitter and its handling of paint recalls Chaim Soutine. The gradual and thoughtful progression through this expressionist manner in which Middleton worked from around 1947 to 1958 is demonstrated by the increasing distortion of physical features and the emphasis on pigment equating with form that we see in paintings such as Judy and Girl with a Kali Sucker.

 

Dickon Hall February 2018

 

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