Adam's Important Irish Art Wednesday May 30th 2018

78 60 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983) Red Landscape (1962) Oil on canvas, 50 x 76cm (19¾ x 30’’) Signed Exhibited: Colin Middleton Exhibition, Magee Gallery, Belfast June/July 1962, Cat. No.45. This painting has, at some stage, been given the title Red Landscape , which had been used by Middleton for a couple of other works exhibited in the early 1960s. It would also seem to date from around this period and does demonstrate the conflation of landscape and figure that was so central to his painting. This period around 1960 is arguably one of the most experimental in Middleton’s career, following a pe- riod of relative stylistic consistency from the late 1940s through to the second part of the 1950s. While in many landscape and figure paintings of the time Middleton is moving towards a highly abstracted architectural language, there are also a number of works in a manner similar to the free and lyrical style of Red Landscape . The strong use of colour recalls Middleton’s expressionist work of the previous decade and is matched by the dynamic line that dominates the painting. Although abstracted in manner we can read the forms of mountains on the horizon, while the spiky, angular shapes in the foreground recall the twisted natu- ral forms in a painting such as Moonlit Hedge, Carnalridge (1960). These could also be read as two loosely constructed, highly linear figures, which are slightly reminiscent of Middleton’s series of paintings of The Family , from 1940 and also of Picasso’s work of the 1930s (although Middleton appears to have held mixed feelings about him). The connecting central crescent could be read as a moon or a rock form and its shape is very similar to the sun in the 1962 Red Landscape , tilted on its side and transformed into a pale moon. Dickon Hall € 8,000 - 12,000