WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 2 DECEMBER 2024 FROM 6PM

80 51 Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983) THE EVENING STAR, CLONELLY, COUNTY FERMANAGH, 1970 oil on board signed with monogram lower right; signed, dated and with David Hendriks Gallery label on reverse 36 by 36in. (91.4 by 91.4cm) Frame Size: 45 by 44in. (114.3 by 111.8cm) Provenance: David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, 1970; K. Kierney Esq.; Collection of Bank of Ireland Throughout the 1960s, the Irish landscape became the main focus of Colin Middleton’s work. During that decade he lived first on the north coast, then in Lisburn and subsequently Belfast, and the family spent regular holidays in their caravan near the Mournes and also at Castle Archdale, in Fermanagh, as well as visiting Donegal. All these places provided subject matter for Middleton, as he created a radically new vision of the landscape within Irish art. Middleton’s approach to the places he painted balanced his visual and emotional experience of the particular location in that moment, with a rigorous process of abstracting the various elements of the visual, physical and historical landscape, using a very personal pictorial language. Clonelly is close to Lower Lough Erne, one of the places that most inspired Middleton in the second part of the 1960s, and while the image has reduced the specific visual elements of the landscape to a highly formalised series of horizontal bands, the painting is highly evocative of the scale of the landscape, the effect of light as the sun is setting, and the calm mood of the lakes. A solid rectangular block breaks up the horizontals in the foreground and leads the eye towards the middle ground of the composition, with a brief suggestion of a contrasting warm orange-red that reflects the sunset, while the sky begins to break up into small triangles and irregular lozenges. Against the grey that dominates it, the blues and golden yellow of the sky are used with exceptional effect, and in the upper passage of the painting the looser brushwork creates an added luminosity and recalls the expressionist manner in which Middleton had been working two decades earlier. Dickon Hall, October 2024 €18,000-€22,000 (£15,130-£18,490 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot51