Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) 'Street Scene - Children at Play' (1939) Oil on canvas, 61 x 76cm (24 x 30'') Signed and dated 39' Provenance: The McClelland Collection and on loan to...

Colin Middleton RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) 'Street Scene - Children at Play' (1939) Oil on canvas, 61 x 76cm (24 x 30'') Signed and dated 39' Provenance: The McClelland Collection and on loan to IMMA from 1999 to 2004. Exhibited: ''Colin Middleton Paintings & Drawings from the Mc Clelland Collection'' IMMA Jan-June 2001. The Belfast street scenes Colin Middleton painted around the beginning of the second world war are rarely as charming and unsentimental as the present work. The figures set up a suggestion of narrative despite all going about their own business, and whereas a decade later Middleton's figures often seem dislocated from their surroundings, at this period there seems to be a sense of community between people and the streets they inhabit. The short broken brushstrokes build up a rhythmic pattern of areas of flat colours that gives the painting a strong abstract sensibility. This is emphasised by the flatness of the dominant plane of the painting, the street that immediately faces us, and there is some relief from this intensity in the sidestreet that leads away from us into the picture space. Despite Middleton's evident internationalism of outlook, as an artist and as a man, it is interesting to see in these wartime street scenes and in the long series of landscapes Middleton painted in the 1960s and 1970s, an abiding interest in and affection for the places and people that immediately surrounded him. Dickon Hall, December 2008

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