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Colin Middleton RHA RUAMBE (1910-1983)
Opus I Group II: The Wilderness, Mother & Child 3 (1941)
Oil on canvas, 61 x 40.5cm (24 x 16”)
Signed and dated 1941, signed with artist’s device and inscribed with title verso
Provenance: From the Collection of George and Maura McClelland and on loan from them to
IMMA from 1999-2004; Private Collection, Dublin
Exhibited:
Colin Middleton
Exhibition, Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, 1943, Cat. No. 14
Colin Middletion: Paintings and Drawings from the McClelland Collection
, IMMA,
Dublin, Jan- June 2001
Northern Artists from the McClelland Collection
, IMMA, Dublin, 2004-2005;
Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, 2005
Literature:
The Hunter Gatherer,
IMMA 2004, illustrated fig. 76 page 58
Colin Middleton took on the subject of the mother and child regularly throughout his career
and indeed the present painting formed part of a small group of works on this subject in his
1943 exhibition.This is, however, an unusual painting both in its treatment of the figures and
in its dark mood; in general, Middleton treats the relationship in a more traditional manner,
depicting it as nurturing and close and expressing it as an interlocking and unified pictorial
unit.
Despite the mother’s left arm holding the child, there is a clear gap between the two bodies,
which only appear to make contact again at the head. Intriguingly it is actually another face
that seems to be locked to the mother’s lips, emerging in a ghostly fashion between the two
figures, but this form is left ambiguous and unresolved.
The standing child reaches as if clawing at its mother’s eyes and her body seems contorted in
a tight and anguished pose. Strong red notes running across her nails, nipples, throat, hips and
eyes stand out against the cold tones of the skin and maintain a high emotional pitch. The
strange, foetus-like child is ambiguous, either helpless or malevolent, its eyes staring at the
mother’s upturned face.The distorted and etiolated figures are unlike anything we expect from
Middleton and, given the date, it might be read as expressing the traumatic grief Middleton
suffered at the premature death of his first wife, Maye, in 1939 and perhaps also the fact that
they had not had any children, as well as a more general expression of the pain and trauma
of wartime.
Dickon Hall, March 2014
€7,000 - 10,000
