WHYTE'S EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2020

108 66 Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE QUEEN OF SPAIN’S DAUGHTER, 1972-74 [WILDERNESS SERIES NO. 28] oil on board signed lower right; inscribed, signed in monogram and dated [1972/1974] on reverse 17 by 17in. (43.2 by 43.2cm) Frame Size: 25 by 25in. (63.5 by 63.5cm) Condition: This work appears to be in very good condtion. The board is stable and surface is clean. There are no signs of cracking or flaking. There is one minor scratch visible on close inspection centre right. Provenance: Taylor Gallery, London; Private collection; Whyte’s, 19 November 2002, lot 33; Private collection Exhibited: ’Annual Exhibition of Irish Art’, Taylor Gallery, London, 1 June to 30 July, 1993, catalogue no. 8 (illustrated) The obvious source for the title of this painting would seem to be the Elizabethan nursery rhyme, ‘I Had a Little Nut Tree’, which refers to the ‘King of Spain’s daughter’, Juana of Castile, who visited the court of Henry VII in 1506 and who has gone down in history as being ‘mad’. In the 1970s Colin and Kate Middleton paid a number of visits to Barcelona to see their daughter Jane, and references to Spain, its landscape, lifestyle and customs and history permeate his work of that decade. The transformation from King to Queen in the title is presumably deliberate and might reflect the dominance of the female figure in these late Wilderness paintings, and indeed throughout Middleton’s work. The hint of the nursery rhyme within the title sets a certain mood for the picture. We may be intended to read the solitary wandering figure as Juana on her travels, tolling a handbell and surrounded in her madness by a bright yet stark desert landscape, interrupted only by rugged mountains in the distance. One could speculate on the introduction of an autobiographical element that occurs in a number of the Wilderness paintings; the roll of elaborately patterned material trailed from this figure that harks back to Middleton’s early training to make designs for damask. She is weighed down by that fabric, struggling in a hostile mental landscape. Dickon Hall €30,000-€50,000 (£26,670-£44,440 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot66