92
80
Charles McAuley RUA ARSA (1910-1999)
Wooded Landscape with Huts
Oil on canvasboard, 35.5 x 45cm (14 x 17$”)
Signed
Provenance: From the estate of the late James Gibson
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81
Colin Middleton RHAMBE (1910-1983)
Farmhouse and Outbuildings, c.1958
Oil on canvas, 23 x 28cm (9 x 11”)
Signed
Provenance: From the estate of the late James Gibson
!is beautifully organised painting is typical of the
intriguing period in the late 1950s that Colin Middleton
spent in Portrush. Both natural and man-made forms
are brought together as an architecturally conceived
whole. !e apparent solidity of form is belied by the
small deliberate brushstrokes and the carefully controlled
palette is built up from a full range of colour.
Shapes are repeated across the canvas, such as the triangles
in the gate, theee haystacks, the tree trunks and even
the triangle of sky framed between the farmhouse roof
and the top of the tree beside it. A series of intersecting
diagonals lead the eye through towards the repeated
horizontal rectangles of the buildings and the landscape
%eetingly glimpsed behind.
!e scarecrow is almost lost within the compressed planes
of the &eld and the garden and its subdued presence
suggests something between the natural and the man-
made. Painted in the years before he embraced a more
abstract manner of working, the present work suggests
Middleton’s increasing formal interests but also his love of
farmland and his environment as well as the mischievous
wit that pervades all periods of his work.
Dickon Hall, May 2013
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