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This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2002 Sep 17 @ 10:00UTC-08:00 : PST/AKDT
Colin Middleton RHA (1910-1983)
K. AT THE PIANO
signed lower left; inscribed with title and date [Portrush, Novemnber 1957] on reverse
oil on canvas
91 by 61cm., 36 by 24in.
Colin Middleton - 'K at the Piano' 1957
The second half of the 1950s was a time of personal and professional upheaval for Colin Middleton. His dealer and mentor, Victor Waddington, had ended their business relationship and closed his Dublin gallery, and Middleton had been forced to return to teaching, moving to Coleraine to take up his post at the town's Technical College. His output as a painter seems to have dropped dramatically during the second half of this decade, and it was clearly a period of re-evaluation.
This painting is the probably the earliest of the varied and inventive images of Middleton's wife Kate playing the piano that were to recur in his work throughout much of the next decade. In technique, tone and subject matter it seems to mark a break with his painting of the previous ten years, and the seriousness of intent with which Middleton approached this work is evident in the scale of the canvas he selected.
After a decade in which Middleton had painted landscapes or unlocated figures, this interior scene is unusual, and the intimiste nature of the picture is a reminder of his interest in Bonnard. Compared to the expressionist manner that preceded this painting, it introduces a very muted tonality, largely neutral greys and dull browns, beiges and red, with the single light source providing occasional striking highlights in red. Middleton's brushwork in general remains broken up, and in occasional passages of particular boldness it harks back to pictures of the earlier 1950s such as Gypsy, Ardglass, although it does not have the same rhythm as the work of this time.
This is an extremely carefully constructed composition, in which objects are flattened while the three dimensional space of the interior remains firmly delineated. Between the geometry of the piano and the pale lines on the wall, and the looser rounded forms of the guitar (which was to feature more centrally in later paintings) and the armchair in the foreground, the figure of Middleton's wife holds the work together. The Middletons were a musical couple, and the piano was a much-loved object in the household. When they bought a new piano years later, the memories of the instrument which had featured in this series of paintings were so strong that they kept the old piano.
Dickon Hall, Killinchy, March 2002
Dickon Hall is the author of Colin Middleton: A Study, JOGA Press, Belfast, 2001.
€40,000-€50,000 (IR £31,200-£39,000 approx.)
Auction Location:
United Kingdom
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Viewing: September 14-16, 11am to 6pm. (to 9pm on 16th).
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