Colin Middleton RHA MBE (1910-1983) Opus I No. 41 Esmeralda 1942 Oil on canvas, 58.5 x 76cm (23 x 30'') Signed, inscribed and dated 1942 Exhibited: ''Colin Middleton Exhibition'', IMMA, Jan 2001...

Colin Middleton RHA MBE (1910-1983) Opus I No. 41 Esmeralda 1942 Oil on canvas, 58.5 x 76cm (23 x 30'') Signed, inscribed and dated 1942 Exhibited: ''Colin Middleton Exhibition'', IMMA, Jan 2001 - June 2001 Ulster Artists Exhibition, the AVA Gallery, Clandeboye, April 2010, catalogue no. 30 Literature: ''The Hunter Gatherer'' Irish Museum of Modern Art, illustrated fig.63, p.73. Provenance: From the McClelland Collection and on loan to IMMA from 1999 - 2004 The carefree woman dancing across this landscape in the present work recalls 'The Music of the Spheres', and both were indeed exhibited in Colin Middleton's 1943 Belfast Museum and Art Gallery exhibition. The elements of the painting and its treatment are particularly typical of Middleton's painting of the early 1940s and notably original. The dipping clouds form a repetitive pattern across the canvas, emphasising the stability of the church. The spire points up to the sun and leaves us with the ambiguity of whether the woman is reaching up towards the moon or holding a ball. Middleton's choice of title is also ambiguous; is this purely a name chosen for the figure, or is there a suggestion of a narrative linked to The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Dickon Hall

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