Middleton painted under Janet Middleton until 1950 and then as Middleton for the rest of her life.

1922-2018

Middleton studied at the Winnipeg School of Art (1941-3), at the Provincial Institute of Art and Technology in Calgary (1943-6) with H.G. Glyde and Walter J. Phillips, and at the Banff School of Fine Arts with Phillips, Glyde, George Pepper, and A.Y. Jackson (a member of the Group of Seven).  In 1961-2, through a British Arts Council Bursary for the Slade School of Art (London), she studied graphics.  During that time, she also traveled and studied in France, Italy, Japan, Indonesia, and the USA.

Middleton taught at the Department of Extension, University of Alberta (1948-64), which offered her an opportunity to travel across the Province of Alberta.  Between 1947(at 27 years old she was the youngest female instructor) and 1971 she taught painting for the summer terms at the Banff School of Fine Arts.   She later lectured at the University of Guelph, Ontario in the Landscape Architecture and Costume Department.

Janet Middleton worked with a variety of media.  She painted in watercolor and oil, explored lithography and intaglio, worked as a muralist and with stained glass – one of her beautiful stained-glass windows is at Grace Presbyterian Church, Calgary). Influenced by Walter J. Phillips, Janet utilized the printmaking media of woodcut, linocut, and serigraphy.  Her approach to watercolor was very much based in the tradition of English Watercolors Technique, with its use of light, transparent washes.  This style also emphasized the tradition of the topographic artists of the expansionist period, where working plein air served the purpose of documentation.  She worked as WJ Phillips’ assistant in his later years.

Along with her landscape work, Middleton was a well-known portraitist.  She was frequently commissioned by the Province of Alberta and many of her portraits of Government dignitaries are included in the Provincial Collection.  The Banff Centre commissioned eight portraits by the artist in the 1970s.  She was commissioned to produce public art murals and she illustrated various books.  Her works are held in public and private collections, including the AFA.

She was an early core member of the Edmonton Branch (Western) of the Canadian Society of Painters & Etchers, along with George Weber, Edmonton (its first president), Annora Brown, Ft. Macleod, Stanford E. Blodgett, Calgary, Margaret Shelton, Hubalta, and James Agrell Smith, Red Deer.  Her serigraphs were exhibited, along with one hundred and twelve other entries, in The First Western Canada Print Exhibit (1956-7) at Hart House, Toronto.  Her works were regularly included in the large, juried exhibitions of the CPE (in 1961 she was granted full membership).

Reference:
Armstrong, Christopher. Nelles, H.V. The Painted Valley, Artists Along Alberta’s Bow River, 1845-2000. University of Calgary Press, 2007.

Cochran, Bente Roed.  Printmaking in Alberta, 1945-1985.  Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1989.

Gooch, Jane Lytton.  Mount Assiniboine, Images In Art.  Vancouver, BC: Rocky Mountain Books, 2007.

Laviolette, Mary-Beth. An Alberta Art Chronicle: Adventures in Recent & Contemporary Art. Altitude Publishing, Canmore, Alberta, 2005.
MacDonald, Colin S.  A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 4.  Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks, 2000.

Middleton, catalogue published Los Gatos, California.
Townshend, Nancy. A History of Art in Alberta 1905-1970. Bayeux Arts Publishing, Calgary, AB, 2005.