ADAM'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MAY 2026

40 16 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA (1910 - 1983) The Princess (1949) Oil on canvas, 66 x 76cm (26 x 30”) Signed, also signed and inscribed with title and dated Nov/Dec 1949 verso Provenance: Collection of Reeta and Frank Hughes, Warrenpoint, thence by descent. Exhibited: London, Tooth Gallery, ‘Colin Middleton, Paintings, 1947-1952’, Oct/Nov 1952, cat.no.16 € 30,000 - 50,000 The Princess was painted at a remarkably productive time for Colin Middleton. He had moved to Ardglass with his family in the summer of that year, only a few months after his first one-person exhibition at the Victor Waddington Gallery in Dublin, of which the critic of the Dublin Magazine had written, ‘With this show, Middleton, from being just one of the more interesting of the moderns, has become a great painter.’ (1) Waddington’s agreement to take Middleton on as a gallery artist, at the end of 1948, had enabled him to become a full-time painter and to leave Belfast, and the Dublin deal- er’s practical and moral support was also very important for Middleton at this time, not only arranging regular exhibi- tions in Dublin, London and further afield, and planning to publish a book on his work , but also supporting Middle- ton’s powerful creative vision with regular letters and visits to Ardglass. The Princess was included in Middleton’s 1950 Dublin exhibition; Waddington wrote to him that ‘The exhibition is magnificent’. (2) The painting was picked out in the lengthy review published in the Dublin Magazine , who also subse- quently noted its inclusion in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1952. The Princess is a complex and ambitious painting. Dom- inated by the figure of a young girl in a red gown, whose features are treated in a more stylised and detailed manner than is typical of this period, the canvas is filled with doll- like figures, including a Mr Punch glove puppet, beneath a turbulent sky. Middleton’s work at this period is dominated by a number of significant multi-figure compositions, and symbolism remained central to his work, even as it became considered closer in style to expressionism in the late 1940s. Whether the girl is part of the same narrative as the figures around her, or whether they are part of her imagina- tion or a dream, it is perhaps also relevant to consider that children’s toys, belonging to Kathleen’s two young daugh- ters, would have been part of Middleton’s daily life outside the studio at this time, and there might be a rare nod to his domestic life within this work. Dickon Hall, April 2026 (1)Dublin Magazine, April-June 1949, review of ‘Colin Middleton: Paintings 1942-49’ (2)Letter from Victor Waddington to Colin Middleton, 20th October 1950, Private Collection