SEATED FIGURE: 6.72 [1972]

Colin Middleton MBE RHA (1910-1983)

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Showing Lot 68 of 229

Estimate: €25,000 - €35,000

Price Realised: €25,000

Signature: signed in monogram lower right; signed again on reverse and inscribed with title [Seated Figure: 6.72]; with inscribed Arts Council of Northern Ireland label on reverse; also with [1985] Studio stamp on reverse

Medium: oil on gesso-prepared board

Size: 36 by 36in., 90 by 90cm.

Provenance: Collection of the artist;His sale, Christie's, London, 4 October 1985, lot 177 (full colour illustration in catalogue); with Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin;Where purchased by the previous owner;Thence by descent

Exhibited: 'Colin Middleton', David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, January to February 1973, catalogue no. 3;'Colin Middleton', David Hendriks at the Cork Arts Society Gallery, Cork, until 21 July 1973, catalogue no. 2;’Colin Middleton Retrospective’, Arts Council exhibition, Ulster Museum, Belfast, and Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1976, catalogue no. 173 (loaned from the collection of the artist);

Seated Figure 6.72 is part of an ambitious series of large paintings of the female nude that Colin Middleton completed in the early 1970s. While the female figure occurred frequently in his work from previous decades it was often seen in a more narrative or symbolic context. These paintings depict a female figure, highly abstracted and depersonalised, with no setting or attributes that identify her. Even the titles of the works refrain from any detail, conceding only the most basic details of the subject and the date of its production. It is interesting to compare the series of work to which Seated Figure 6.72 belongs to the single figure paintings of the early 1950s, such as Gypsy, Ardglass or Teresa, both of which remove all context from the actual painting and concentrate almost entirely on the sitter, but also suggest a specific identity, place or narrative in the title.Seated Figure 6.72 is more schematised than these in its treatment of the female figure, although it retains the strong sense of physical presence that these earlier works share. The figure is sexualised but not eroticised and the interlocked hands evoke a more awkward presence and a suggestion of tension. While many of the Seated Figure group use an extremely reduced palette there is a much stronger and wider range of colour in the present painting. Rather than looking back at the formalised synthesis of nude with landscape that Middleton experimented with in the 1960s Seated Figure 6.72, in its palette and stronger forms, seems to look forward to the often vibrantly colourful and more geometric female figures of Middleton's late Spanish paintings.Blocks of flat colour and shape reiterate the flatness of the picture plane and contrast with the volumetric female form. The physical surface of the prepared board is also noticeable across the work, maintaining the sense of controlled design. The repeated vertical strokes of various scales that run throughout the work recall Middleton's landscapes of the period, suggesting spatial depth, but ultimately the isolation of the figure is deliberate and adds to the focus on the formal construction of the work. Clearly Middleton felt that this group of female nudes was at the heart of his work at this time, as the earlier Seated Figure K.371.1 was selected to represent him in the 1971 publication Causeway. In addition, Middleton selected the present work to be included in the Arts Council's 1976 touring retrospective of his work. Dickon HallApril 2014

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SEATED FIGURE: 6.72 [1972]

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