Artist Details

Colin Middleton

(1910-1983)

Colin Middleton, born in Belfast in 1910, has been described as the greatest
surrealist artist that Ireland has produced – “you could say that in the
1930s I was the only surrealist painter working in Ireland.” It’s fitting
that he’s represented in Ross Fine Art by a surrealist sketch from 1975.
However, as S.B. Kennedy has commented, his work was eclectic as he
developed as an artist, “embracing a bewildering array of style, so that it
is impossible to characterise him.” Kenneth Jamison wrote that Middleton’s
output would do justice to three men; the third a magician: “It is this
magical intensity that distinguishes the art of Colin Middleton.”

Middleton exhibited for many years at the Royal Hibernian Academy. He was
awarded the MBE in 1969 and became a full member of the RHA in 1970. The
Arts Councils in the Republic and Northern Ireland organised a major
retrospective in 1976. There have been two recent monographs: Carlo Eastwood
(ed.), Colin Middleton: A Millennium Appreciation, Eastwood Gallery,
Belfast, 2000, and Dickon Hall, Colin Middleton: A Study, Joga Press, 2001.

Works by Colin Middleton are held in the National Gallery, the Hugh Lane and
the Irish Museum of Modern Art, as well as in the Glebe Gallery collection
in Churchill.

He remains one of the top-selling Irish artists, ranking fifth in sales in
leading Irish auction rooms in 2005.