140
93
Colin Middleton RHA RUA (1910-1983)
Spain Dream Revisited (1938)
Oil on canvas, 61 x 40.5cm (24 x 16”)
Signed and dated 1938
Provenance: From the Collection of George and Maura McClelland and on loan from them to IMMA from 1999 - 2004;
Private Collection Dublin
Exhibited:
Colin Middleto
n Exhibtion, IMMA, Jan-Jun 2001;
Northern Artists from the McClelland Collection
Exhibition, IMMA 2004/5, Droichead Arts Centre, 2005;
The Surreal in Irish Art
, F.E. McWilliam Museum, May/Sept 2011,The Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda Sept/Nov 2011;
Sean Keating: Contemporary Contexts
,The Crawford Gallery, Cork, July/Oct 2012; and
Gerard Dillon, Art and Friendships
, Adam’s, Dublin, July 2013 and The Ava Gallery, Clandeboye, August 2013, Cat No. 41
Literature:
The Hunter Gatherer,
IMMA 2004, illustrated Fig. 58 p.97;
The Surreal in Irish Art
, F.E. McWilliam Museum 2011, Fig. 9, illustrated p.13;
Sean Keating: Contemporary Contexts
by Dr. Eimear O’Connor 2012, illustrated p.37;
Art in Ireland Since 1910
by Fiona Barber 2013, illustrated p.83; and
Gerard Dillon, Art and Friendships
by Karen Reihill 2013, illustrated p.41
While Colin Middleton’s work contains numerous references to World War Two, it is unusual to find such a clearly expressed reaction to
the Spanish Civil War.This was, however, a cause taken up passionately by the international surrealist movement in the 1930s and perhaps
in the present painting Middleton is aligning himself politically as well as artistically with these distant allies. He also appears in this work
to identify the Catholic Church, another regular target of the surrealists, with repression and even violence, although it is noticeable that
Middleton’s works inspired by the Spanish Civil War are generally more intellectual and less overtly emotional than those relating to the
Second World War.
While the composition of the present work has a distinctly modernist angularity, it also draws on Middleton’s interest in much earlier art-
ists such as van der Weyden and van Eyck, whose work he had seen in Belgium in the 1930s. A nude whose elongated form modulates into
her surroundings in the building opposite, is also framed in the nearer window of this monastic room. Here a faceless nun holds up a frame
(or perhaps a lid) through which she regards a tiny female figure trapped, in a pose recalling the crucifixion, in a box that lies on a table.
While our eye is immediately drawn through the window towards the far figure, the tension of the picture lies within this room, between
the crucified figure and the nun, the shape of whose vestments have been filled out into elongated and voluminous geometric shapes.The
oppression of the small, vulnerable figure trapped by the powerful and impersonal forces of the state and church is watched with apparent
unconcern by the neighbour who pulls the curtains aside, perhaps the artist’s comment on the war in Spain and the attitude of its European
neighbours.
Dickon Hall, November 2013
€25,000 - 35,000
