Colin Middleton

Described by the poet Michael Longley ad having "painted in almost as many styles as there are "isms", in modern art but always with his own voice", Colin Middleton is unique in the history of Irish painting for the sheer diversity of his style and absolute facility of technique in terms of formal control, clarity of colour and beauty of line.

Born in Belfast in 1910, the son of landscape painter and damask designer Charles C. Middleton, Colin Middleton joined his father’s firm where he worked for some twenty years as a designer before devoting himself entirely to painting.

During his formative years he attended evening classes at Belfast Royal Academy and painted in his spare time. An early affection for the work of Monet and Pissarro was eclipsed by the intensity and expressionism of Van Gogh when Middleton visited an exhibition of the artist's work in London in 1928. Middleton also responded to the intuitive, dream-world subject matter of the Surrealists, firstly of the English exponents such as Tristian Hillier, Edward Wadsworth and Poul Nash and later the more psychologically-charged surrealism of Salvador Dali, in a decorative, highly precise method, informed by the International Gothic style and 15th century Flemish art.

The Blitz of Belfast in 1941 deeply affected Middleton, with the result that his paintings departed from a preoccupation with the subconscious to a subject matter through which the artist, painting in a Neo-Impressionist technique, sought to reaffirm simple values associated with everyday living.

In 1947 Middleton left the damask business and with his wife Kate spent a year with the Middleton Murry Community in East Anglia. There, the artist's love of landscape was rekindled and his subsequent settlement first in Co. Down and later in Co. Antrim inspired landscapes directly influenced by the distinctive light, land configurations and vegetation of each locale. The artist once summarised his art by concluding that he needed the organic reference, whether it be landscape or figure. Certainly, the sense and spirit of underlies all Middleton's work, whatever the idiom in which he works.

A large retrospective exhibition was held at Belfast Art Gallery in 1943 and in 1949 Middleton was taken up by the dealer Victor Waddington through whom his work became known internationally and was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Middleton was on of the Fine Irish painters shown at Tooth's in London in 1952. In 1972 the artist travelled widely in Australia and Spain from which resulted new series of pictures. In 1969 he was created MBE and in 1970 member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. In 1976 a retrospective consisting of nearly 300 works was held at the Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery.