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Colin Middleton RHA RUAMBE (1910 - 1983)
Opus I, No 39 (Group IV) The Owl
Oil on canvas laid on board, 27 x 37cm (10½ x 14½”)
Signed with monogram, also signed with monogram, inscribed with title and dated 1942
on canvas strip verso
Exhibited: ‘Colin Midelton’ Exhibition Belfast Museum and Art Gallery 1943 Cat. No.39
This is an intriguing painting, both in its own right and in its close relationship to other
works by Middleton. Images of birds recur throughout Middleton’s work, sometimes clarify-
ing the interpretation of a painting, although their own meaning is often ambiguous; usually,
as here, they appear to be connected in some way to a female figure within the work and
remain slightly detached from the physical world and its struggles.
The presence of the sun and moon in a sky divided between dark cloud and sunset suggests a
duality that perhaps mirrors the relationship of the woman and the owl.The owl appears to
be guiding this family on their journey towards the tower in the distance; the land they are
travelling through is empty but not lifeless.This group does not seem to belong to the type
of wandering families dispossessed by the war that we see in Middleton’s paintings in the
later 1940s; instead this appears to be a more personally symbolic image of a family moving
towards a brighter future.
The couple are connected by the red checked material of his bag and her shawl, suggesting
poverty as well as unity and the edge of the shawl encloses the child into the group, while it
is clothed in the same pattern in a different colour.
The Owl
was exhibited alongside
The Skylark
(National Museums Northern Ireland) in Colin
Middleton’s first solo exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1943 and it is
interesting to note that this companion painting depicts a similar couple resting on a journey
and guided by a skylark through the landscape. Middleton was to return to the image of the
owl in paintings in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dickon Hall
€5,000 - 8,000
