Whyte's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 6 MARCH 2023 AT 6PM

74 56 Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) DARK LADY, 1976 oil on board signed lower right; signed, titled and dated on reverse 24 by 24in. (61 by 61cm) Frame Size: 33 by 33in. (83.8 by 83.8cm) Provenance: Lad Lane Gallery, Dublin, 1981; Private collection; Eakin Gallery, Belfast; Private collection Completed in 1976, The Dark Lady is one of the later works that relate to, and develop ideas from Colin Middleton’s extendedWilderness Series. As with much of Middleton’s work the Wilderness Series, mostly painted between 1972 and 1974, brings together various inspirations and ideas that relate to his life at that time as well as continuing themes from throughout his career. Although Middleton acknowledged that the early days of the Troubles, when he was still living in Belfast, had brought back a surrealist influence into his work, much as he had experienced during the period of the Blitz of Belfast almost three decades earlier, much of the iconography in the Wilderness Series was clearly derived from the long sea voyage he undertook with his wife to Australia in 1972. After a period in which the Irish landscape had dominated Middleton’s work, the Wilderness Series revisited the female archetype that had remained at the heart of his painting since the 1930s. The Dark Lady shares with the Wilderness Series its sense of a vast but undefined space, recalling Middleton’s time in Australia and on board ship, with imagery that also remains ambiguous. There is an emphasis on texture, which might be connected with Middleton’s design background, a source of ideas and possibilities that he often returned to in the 1960s and 1970s. The Westerness Series developed certain elements of the Wilderness Series but introduced elements of folklore, myth and legend that found their embodiment in the female archetype, as in The Dark Lady. It is notable that Middleton used the subtitle ‘Transmutations Metamorphoses Visitations’ for an exhibition in 1977. The figure in the present painting seems in her texture and shapes to be part of the structure around her, as if she is metamorphosing into a female shape but occupies another sphere; the female archetype seems to have remained crucial for Middleton as he saw it as so multi-faceted, related to all aspects of our environment: the natural world, the spiritual and mystical world and a more personal reality. Dickon Hall February 2023 €25,000-€35,000 (£22,120-£30,970 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot56