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The McClelland Collection
27
Colin Middleton MBE RHA (1910-1983)
CHILDREN AT PLAY, 1939
oil on canvas
signed [Colin M] and dated [1939] lower left; titled on reverse
24 x 29½in. (60.96 x 74.93cm)
Provenance:
Collection of George and Maura McClelland
The Belfast street scenes that Colin Middleton painted mostly during the war years reflect the depth and
complexity of his own relationship with the city where he lived until well into his thirties. Some represent
a particular named place, while many are unspecific but, as in Children at Play, present a highly stylised
synthesis of the Victorian terraces and repeated architectural features that occurred throughout the city.
Despite his familiarity, as a damask designer, with the factories and industrial landscape of Belfast, Middleton
usually chose in his paintings to concentrate on the opposite side of city life, the tightly-organised residential
streets and the lives led there. This housing was largely the result of Belfast’s swift industrial expansion; the
building that rises in the distance with its three chimneys resembles a factory or mill and is a reminder of the
relationship between the people he depicted and the places that provided employment.
The present painting demonstrates Middleton’s affection for Belfast and his sense of solidarity with these
anonymous inhabitants with whom he shared the city. Alongside the intense, generally non-naturalistic
colour and the simplification of forms, this painting is composed with extreme sophistication, based
on geometrical arrangements that connect the figures and the architectural environment in a series of
interlocking shapes. A number of triangles both isolate and connect the cat and the various figures, while
the arrangement of shapes in a range of scale and complexity creates small harmonious sections that also
become part of the larger geometry of the composition. The repeated flat planes of colour and the abrupt
curve as the street rises away demonstrate Middleton’s awareness of Cézanne’s compositional arrangements.
The year of Children at Play, 1939, was highly significant for Middleton. His first wife, Maye, died in the summer
of that year and following this loss he was apparently unable to paint for almost a year and also destroyed
many of the paintings in his studio. It seems likely that this was painted earlier in the year and escaped the
destruction of works. In this context, particularly given the outbreak of World War II in that same year, it takes
on an added poignancy, a high-toned, intimate and peaceful recollection of an ordinary world in which
children play innocently in the street and people go quietly about their business.
Dickon Hall
August 2016
€30000-€50000 (£25640-£42740 approx.)
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