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Colin Middleton RHA RUAMBE (1910-1983)
Promised Land (1947)
Oil on canvas, 51 x 63.5cm, (20 x 25”)
Signed and inscribed with title and dated October 1947 verso, (AR 23)
Colin Middleton’s complex reaction to World War Two worked itself out in his work over
more than ten years. While some paintings make specific reference to the war or are clearly
influenced by it, towards the end of the 1940s a broad humanist vision begins to dominate in
which the isolated and anonymous figures dispossessed by the war and suffering its horrific
consequences become even more universal figures that represent universal human alienation
and suffering, often in the face of social indifference.
The Promised Land
belongs to the very beginning of this period.The rhythmic paint surface is
a reminder of Middleton’s interest in van Gogh and looks forward to the development of his
work towards more energetic, looser and more heavily loaded brushstrokes. The two figures
cling together as if to support themselves against the swirling energy of the sky, the woman
almost naked against the harsh elements.Middleton was deeply affected by the newsreel foot-
age of the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the war and many of the figures
in his work of this time seem as if they might have come from these films. It is unusual to find
such a monochromatic palette as in
The Promised Land
, its almost electric blues heightening
the tension and otherworldly mood of the work. The bareness of the landscape reflects the
destruction of the war as well as increasing our sense of its victims’ helplessness within this
environment where there is no shelter or food.
Titles drawn from the Bible occur increasingly towards the late 1940s in Middleton’s paint-
ing, bringing a wider meaning to the suffering of the figures he painted. There is a sense of
hope and of redemption in these paintings.While the literal search for a promised land was a
fact for many who had been forced from their own homes by the war, there is an intensity of
meaning that the biblical reference brings to this timeless couple. We are reminded that this
search for a new land, for peace, recurs throughout history, that we cannot look at our own
time in isolation. Middleton had recently returned from his own search for a different life at a
farming commune in England, so perhaps thoughts were in his mind of how much the idea of
a spiritual or physical promised land ahead is a part of the human condition.
Dickon Hall, March 2014
€20,000 - 30,000
