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John Middleton
Norwich 1827 – 1856 Norwich
Gunton Park, Norfolk
Gunton Park, Norfolk
Bolingbroke 2
113 x 162 mm (plate); 278 x 379 mm (sheet)
Original etching, c.1850-52.
The plate signed with the monogram.
On cream chine collé on stout ‘white’ wove.
Issued in Nine Etchings by John Middleton 1852.
Printing defect at the left edge and other small defects.
£300
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Additional
Information about the Artist
Born only 6 years before the Norwich Society of Artists was dissolved, Middleton belonged to the third generation of Norwich School painter-etchers and was part of the final flowering of the tradition.
Middleton too attended Norwich Grammar School before becoming a pupil of John Berney Ladbrooke, the son of Robert Ladbrooke who had co-founded the Society of Norwich Artists.
He moved to London in 1847, becoming a pupil and friend of Henry Bright, another artist associated with the Norwich School. After the death of his father Middleton returned to Norwich in 1849 to run the family business (his father had been a plumber, glazier, painter and glass-stainer) but he continued to exhibit in London at the Royal Academy and British Institute until 1855, the year before his early death, aged only twenty-nine, from tuberculosis.
A noted painter in watercolours, Middleton probably took up etching when he was back in Norwich and produced ten plates, mainly of wooded landscapes. Nine of these he published in a book in 1852 but the edition must have been small as impressions are rarely found.
Middleton was another early enthusiast of photography and a member of the Norwich Photographic Society, probably being introduced to the process by his friend Thomas Lound.
The
other two prints by Middleton in this exhibition are:
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