WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART Monday 7 March 2022 from 6PM

90 66 Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) EVENING, BOA ISLAND, COUNTY FERMANAGH oil on board signed with monogram lower right; inscribed and with Bell Gallery label on reverse 24 by 23.50in. (61 by 59.7cm) Frame size: 31 by 31in. (78.7 by 78.7cm) Provenance: Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, Dublin; Private collection At different points in his career, certain landscapes became increasingly important for Colin Middleton, often the places where he was living or spending time on family holidays. He spent much of the late 1950s and 1960s working around north Antrim and the north coast, the Mournes and Lisburn. In the late 1960s Middleton began to spend time in the west, particularly around Lough Erne. In response to this new landscape there are subtle shifts in Middleton’s visual language and style. Rather than the construction of these works being shaped by the notation of space within large, open landscapes and their often harsher terrain, the paintings around Lough Erne are more concerned with evolving pictorial equivalents for the subtle and shifting effects of light on water and the movement between islands and lake. The present work is dominated by a repeated pattern of vertical strokes that define the recession of space across the landscape but also suggest specific aspects of the view across the lough to the island. Horizontal bands of varying tone respond to passages of water, land and sky, defined by the elusive evening light rather than by any physical aspects of the place. The square format of the board, typical of Middleton’s work since the early 1960s, maintains tension between the horizontal and the vertical elements. Paintings of Fermanagh appeared regularly in Middleton’s exhibitions at the Hendriks Gallery and the Tom Caldwell Gallery in the late 1960s and 1970s, including a number of Boa Island subjects, one of which is in the collection of the Crawford Gallery, Cork. Judging by the price of 75 guineas written on a label on the reverse of the work, the present painting is likely to have been sold or exhibited around 1967-8. Dickon Hall February 2022 €12,000-€18,000 (£10,170-£15,250 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot66