54
WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
67
Colin Middleton MBE RHA (1910-1983)
SEATED FIGURE: 6.72 [1972]
oil on gesso-prepared board
signed in monogram lower right; signed again on reverse and
inscribed with title [Seated Figure: 6.72]; with inscribed Arts
Council of Northern Ireland label on reverse; also with [1985]
Studio stamp on reverse
36 by 36in. (91 by 91cm)
Provenance:
Collection of the artist;
His sale, Christie’s, London, 4 October 1985, lot 177 (full colour
illustration in catalogue);
with Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin;
Where purchased by the previous owner;
Thence by descent
Exhibited:
‘Colin Middleton’, David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, January to
February 1973, catalogue no. 3;
‘Colin Middleton’, David Hendriks at the Cork Arts Society
Gallery, Cork, until 21 July 1973, catalogue no. 2;
’Colin Middleton Retrospective’, Arts Council exhibition, Ulster
Museum, Belfast, and Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin,
1976, catalogue no. 173 (loaned from the collection of the
artist);
Seated Figure 6.72
is part of an ambitious series of large paintings of
the female nude that Colin Middleton completed in the early 1970s.
While the female figure occurred frequently in his work from previous
decades it was often seen in a more narrative or symbolic context.
These paintings depict a female figure, highly abstracted and
depersonalised, with no setting or attributes that identify her. Even the
titles of the works refrain from any detail, conceding only the most
basic details of the subject and the date of its production.
It is interesting to compare the series of work to which
Seated Figure
6.72
belongs to the single figure paintings of the early 1950s, such as
Gypsy, Ardglass
or
Teresa
, both of which remove all context from the
actual painting and concentrate almost entirely on the sitter, but also
suggest a specific identity, place or narrative in the title.
Seated Figure 6.72
is more schematised than these in its treatment of
the female figure, although it retains the strong sense of physical
presence that these earlier works share.The figure is sexualised but not
eroticised and the interlocked hands evoke a more awkward presence
and a suggestion of tension.While many of the Seated Figure group
use an extremely reduced palette there is a much stronger and wider
range of colour in the present painting. Rather than looking back at the
formalised synthesis of nude with landscape that Middleton
experimented with in the 1960s
Seated Figure 6.72
, in its palette and
stronger forms, seems to look forward to the often vibrantly colourful
and more geometric female figures of Middleton’s late Spanish
paintings.
Blocks of flat colour and shape reiterate the flatness of the picture
plane and contrast with the volumetric female form.The physical
surface of the prepared board is also noticeable across the work,
maintaining the sense of controlled design.The repeated vertical
strokes of various scales that run throughout the work recall
Middleton’s landscapes of the period, suggesting spatial depth, but
ultimately the isolation of the figure is deliberate and adds to the focus
on the formal construction of the work.
Clearly Middleton felt that this group of female nudes was at the heart
of his work at this time, as the earlier
Seated Figure K.371.1
was
selected to represent him in the 1971 publication
Causeway
. In
addition, Middleton selected the present work to be included in the
Arts Council’s 1976 touring retrospective of his work.
Dickon Hall
April 2014
€
25,000-
€
35,000 (£20,660-£28,930 approx.)
