Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 4 DECEMBER 2024

22 6 COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RUA RHA (1910 - 1983) Threshold: Monserrat 2 (1975) Oil on board, 60 x 60cm (23½ x 23½’’) Signed Provenance: with David Hendriks Gallery, label verso € 20,000 - 30,000 Two main series of paintings dominated Colin Middle- ton’s work in the 1970s. The Wilderness Series is often seen as a return to the interest in Surrealism that had dominated his work in the 1930s and early 1940s, and was partly inspired by the journeys Middleton under- took to Australia and Spain in the early 1970s, with various autobiographical elements woven through the series. The Westerness Series is a more compressed and tightly-focussed body of work, in which Middleton’s experience in design and his interest in texture cre- ated passages in which the image is at times almost indistinguishable from the suggestion of materi- al, achieved through effects on the paint surface. Throughout these paintings there is a high level of formal integration of the female archetype with the landscape, and also the recurring symbol of the bird, which Middleton used extensively throughout his career, often to suggest a spiritual aspect or coun- terpart to the human presence. These paintings are a reminder that in many ways Middleton remained a symbolist, rather than a surrealist, throughout his career. The mountain of Montserrat is likely to have been recalled from one of Middleton’s visits to his daugh- ter, Jane, in Barcelona. The religious significance of the mountain is closely associated with the Madonna of Montserrat, in the same way as Middleton ascribed spiritual significance to both place and female figure. The three figures in the painting almost seem to be carved from wood, like the Madonna, but with mysterious pointed hats possibly with architectural overtones. The composition, with three figures, recalls Jane Middleton’s memory of one of her father’s visits to Montserrat, where he made an ‘absolutely beautiful, detailed pencil drawing of the rock formations turned into a Holy Trinity’,¹ which suggests another reading for the three figures in this work. What John Hewitt described as the ‘veils and gauzes of the still capes and panoplies of the rather mon- olithic figures’ ² are wrapped around their bodies and emerge from the rock-like ledge on which they stand. While this series avoids literal interpretation, its ideas and symbols are at the heart of Middleton’s work throughout his career, and are expressed with immense resolution and subtlety. Dickon Hall, October, 2024 1.Jane Middleton Giddens, interview with Dickon Hall, 2 September 2016 2.John Hewitt, Colin Middleton , Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1976, p.52