Adams Summer Loan Exhibition - George Campbell And The Belfat Boys 7th July - 3rd September 2015

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25 Markey Robinson (1918 - 1999)
Tinkers with Melodeons
Oil on card, 40.5 x 76cm
Signed
Lewinter-Frankl Collection
Hewitt met art patron Zoltan Lewinter-Frankl when he was deputy director of the Belfast
Museum and Gallery in the early 1940s. Hewitt and Lewinter-Frankl both admired Belfast
painter, Colin Middleton, and were friends of Markey Robinson. Born in Belfast, 1918
Robinson and Campbell shared a common interest in boxing but Robinson remained
an enigmatic figure throughout the 1940’s sometimes disappearing for weeks at a time.
Frequenting ‘Campbell’s Café’, he exhibited with Campbell, Dillon and O’Neill in,
‘Exhibition of Works by Some Ulster Artists At CEMA,’ 1944-45 and with Dillon and
Campbell in Abbey Galleries, Clonmel, November, 1945. Ukrainian artist Paul Nietsche
(cat. no.27) who came to Belfast in 1926 was also friendly with Lewinter- Frankl and knew
the Belfast Boys well.
Colin Middleton achieved early recognition with a retrospective exhibition at the Belfast
Museum and Art Gallery in 1943, showing a hundred and fifteen works, followed by a
CEMA retrospective show in 1945. Similar to the Boys, Middleton was affected by the Blitz
in Belfast and this resulted in paintings such as ‘The Refugee’. Middleton held his first solo
show with Waddington in 1949, who organized for Middleton to be shown over the years
at the Arthur Tooth and Sons galleries, London, and at a travelling exhibition in America
in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, February, 1950, ‘New Irish
Painters.35 Other artists that contributed to the Boston exhibition were Thurloe Connolly,36
Dillon, O’Neill, Nevill Johnson37 and Louis Le Brocquy.38 Dillon and O’Neill also exhibited
with Middleton in the group exhibition, ‘Twelve Contemporary Irish Artists’ in Stockholm,
1952. Although Middleton exhibited with the group, he wasn’t ‘given to café lounging and
art talk’.39
35The exhibition travelled from Boston to the Baltimore Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Delaware
Art Center, Wilmington, J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville and the Toledo Museum of Art.
36Thurloe Connolly was associated with the White Stag Group and exhibited at the IELA with the Belfast Boys.
37English born, Nevill Johnson (1911–99) exhibited with the group in the 1940s.
38Le Brocquy exhibited with the group in the 1940s at the IELA
39Colin Middleton in ‘Irish Contemporary Art’, David Jones Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, June–July, 1946.