COLIN MIDDLETON, R.H.A. | WILLOWS: DUNDROD

Grafton Gallery, Dublin;

Christie's, London, 14 November 1986, lot 292;

James Adam and Bonhams, Dublin, 28 May 1997, lot 66;

de Veres, Dublin, 9 March 1999

As a painter, Colin Middleton's styles changed often and widely, from more realist works, to Expressionism, Abstraction and Surrealism. Behind these changes, Middleton was strongly motivated by psychological concerns, of the desire to have something significant to express and of finding the appropriate artistic language with which to communicate. As he commented himself, adopting a diversity of styles was a means of reflecting 'one of the most complex periods that the species has ever been through psychologically' (quoted in Dickon Hall, Colin Middleton, 2001, p.12).

Thus in 1941 alone, we see Middleton's style vary from works such as the present landscape, to stylised portraits in Girl with a Fringe (private collection) and Surrealist visions in The Fortune Teller (private collection). Willows: Dundrod relates to a series of landscapes in the early 1940s which, still and gentle, perhaps offer respite from the bombings in Belfast that Middleton had witnessed. The work suggests the influence of van Gogh, whose paintings Middleton had encountered and admired as a young man. The stippled brushwork and tree forms recall in particular van Gogh's famous olive grove series. Middleton's feeling for colour, softly modulated, creates a highly atmospheric work, evoking the last of the sun on a winter's evening.