Colin Middleton tantalised critics during his lifetime with his frequent changes of style, moving between Cubism, Abstraction, Surrealism and Expressionism, but always producing paintings of remarkable power and authority. Born in 1910, in Belfast, Middleton spent his formative years working as a damask designer in the family business and was largely self-taught as a painter. He was deeply affected by war in Europe, firstly by the Spanish Civil War which gave rise to such paintings as The Bride, 1938 and Spain, Dream Revisited, 1938, and then by World War II and the Belfast Blitz.

Middleton’s consistent use of symbol and archetype was supported by his reading of the writings of C.G. Jung. He looked upon archetypal symbols as bridges between the conscious and the unconscious, devices for communicating between instinct and reason. He painted instinctively, admitting that “you may have to do three paintings to find out what the first one is about because the symbol is carried on. The woman’s a tree, the woman’s a flower, the breast is an apple, the apple is an egg and the egg is a bird.” Middleton’s interest in the female archetype was strengthened by his view of history – the Greeks were good when they worshipped the Goddess but declined in significance when they abandoned her in favour of a cult of the male athlete, while the rational culture of the Italian Renaissance yielded nothing but war and fast cars.

Bon Voyage was painted to mark his daughter’s wedding and move to Spain in 1974.