Work by the Northern Irish artist Colin Middleton, who died in 1983, will be familiar to those who attend auction rooms in this country on a regular basis. Last May, for example, at Sotheby's in London, one of his oils called Winter sold for £30,000 while a couple of weeks later another picture, Snow, went for £25,000 at Adam's in Dublin.

Nevertheless, appreciation of Middleton's art has yet to reach a wider audience, although this may now change thanks to the recent publication of a study of the artist. Written by art historian Dickon Hall, the book - replete with colour illustrations - is intended to provide an evaluation of Middleton across the entire spectrum of his career during which, while remaining primarily faithful to the figurative style, he changed directions on a number of occasions.

In his early years, the artist liked to describe himself as the only surrealist painter working in Ireland and this is true of the pictures produced during the 1940s.

But even before the end of that decade, Middleton had begun to paint landscapes and before long he was also creating portraits of an almost expressionist character.

His sense of colour always remained vibrant, a quality not apparent when the work is reproduced in black and white, and so too did his sense of engagement with the process of painting.

While accepting that over the course of five decades, the quality of Middleton's oeuvre was liable to vary, Hall nevertheless argues that he was "one of the most powerful painters of the physical and spiritual situation in the modern world that Ireland has produced".

Colin Middleton by Dickon Hall is published by Joga Press priced £29.95 in paperback and £55 in hardcover.