Middleton, Colin (1910–83), painter, was born 29 January 1910 at 48 Victoria Gardens, Belfast, the only child of Charles Collins Middleton, originally from Manchester, who had settled in Belfast in 1899, and his wife Dora Emily (née Luckhurst) who was from Maidstone, Kent, though of Belgian extraction. Charles Middleton was a damask designer in partnership with Hugh Page at 7 Adelaide St., Belfast. He was also a keen amateur marine painter and an early exponent of the impressionist style in the city. His circle included the painters James Humbert Craig (qv) and Hans Iten. His son was educated at the Belfast Royal Academy, which he left in 1927 to enter his father's business as an apprentice. He attended part-time the Belfast College of Art, where he mainly studied design under Newton Penprase. Fellow students included William Scott (qv) and F. E. McWilliam (qv).
A defining feature of his art was his openness to external influences. This can be traced back as far as 1928 when, on a visit to London, he saw an exhibition of the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853–90), which inspired the expressionistic tendency that was to be one of many styles he pursued. In 1931, while on a visit to Belgium with his father, he saw the work of the expressionist James Ensor (1860–1949). But he had little time for painting, especially after 1935 when, on the death of his father, he had to take over the running of the family business. In the late 1930s he began to experiment with surrealism, being drawn particularly to the meticulous detail of Joan Miró (1893–1983) and Salvador Dali (1904–89). Though works in this style, such as ‘Visitation’ (1948, private collection), account for a significant part of his output and he is the most important exponent of the style in Ireland, he cannot be defined solely as a surrealist. Ultimately he cannot be categorised under any one stylistic label. ‘Anvil rock III’ (1968; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin) is an example of his experiments with abstraction, where comparisons may be made with the work of the English artists Ben Nicholson or Victor Pasmore. At any one time in his career his work could encompass this huge stylistic range. Such eclecticism has aroused suspicion from some critics who have questioned his sense of purpose and the rigour of his personal artistic vision, though his outstanding technical ability has always been acknowledged. Middleton himself justified his approach as a natural reaction to external influences. He saw his wide stylistic choice as being motivated by his deeply personal response to his subject matter and felt that to limit himself in this way would diminish his powers to express the complex psychological meanings he intended his works to have.
A prolific artist and exhibitor, he was however unable to devote himself to art full-time till the award of an Arts Council of Northern Ireland bursary (1970). By this time he was the veteran of a number of one-man exhibitions in Belfast, Dublin, and London. He had begun to establish an international reputation through the Victor Waddington gallery in Dublin, with whom he showed from 1948 to 1955. He later showed at the Ritchie Hendriks gallery, also in Dublin. Along with other Ulster artists such as Gerard Dillon (qv), George Campbell (qv), and Daniel O'Neill (qv), he exhibited in the 1950s at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. Indeed, these northern artists were of central importance for Irish art in that decade. In 1969 he was awarded an MBE and in 1972 an honorary MA (QUB). In 1970 he was elected a member of the RHA, and in 1971 one of his paintings was reproduced on a postage stamp commemorating the Ulster Festival. A major retrospective exhibition of his work was mounted in 1976 at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, which was later seen at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.
He married first (1935) Maye McLain, a fellow art student and later a teacher. She died tragically in 1939. In 1945 he married Kathleen (‘Kate’) Barr, the second daughter of William Alfred Giddens of Belfast (master printer, originally from Brighton, Sussex) and Jenny Moore, a weaver who came from an Armagh family. Kate Middleton had had two daughters with her former husband, Lionel Bruce, poet and scholar of Pembroke College, Oxford. With Colin Middleton she had a son, John (1945–81), also an artist, and a daughter. In 1947 the family spent a year at the ideal community led by John Middleton Murry at Thelnetham, Suffolk. On their return they settled at Ardglass, Co. Down, and were to move several times before settling in Bangor. Colin Middleton died 23 December 1983 at Belfast City Hospital. A sale of the contents of his studio was held by Christie's in London on 4 October 1985.