Anvil Rock III

Artist Colin Middleton (1910 - 1983)

Date1968

MediumOil on board

Dimensions92 x 89 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by the Contemporary Irish Art Society, 1970.

Object number1305

Description'Anvil Rock III' is one of the most abstract examples from a series of spare, lucid works, painted in the 1960s, which resulted from Middleton's fascination with a strange rock formation shaped like an anvil, which he discovered on a lake island in Northern Ireland. Characterised by a constructivist style gently reminiscent of Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore, the artist's interest in spatial relationships, his taste for design, love of texture and gradation of tone comes to the fore in this work. A plywood collage, upon which has been laid a thin layer of white plaster, is stained with shades of black, brown and beige, the feathered brushwork on the beige and brown areas bringing them into relief against the matt black. A scratched white line used to delineate arcs and geometrical patterns, is flowing, yet controlled, and imbues the work with a softly feminine characteristic, a quality which underlies almost all of Middleton's paintings.

(Extract from 'Images and Insights', Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1993, p. 118)

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