Arts Council hosted a joint retrospective of Middleton's work in co-operation with the Scottish Arts Council in 1970. A major retrospective was to follow at the Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art Dublin in 1976. Comprising almost three hundred exhibits, the show was accompanied by a monograph written by Middleton's lifelong friend, the patron and poet John Hewitt. Hewitt would later bequeath his art collection, including several of Middleton's paintings to the Ulster Museum. The Royal Mail used Middleton's painting of Slieve na Brock in the Mourne Mountains to commemorate the Ulster '71 exhibition in a series of postage stamps that also featured the work of Tom Carr and TP Flanagan. In 1972 Middleton toured extensively with his wife visiting Australia for two months and showing his works from the trip at the McClelland International Galleries on Belfast's Lisburn Road the following year. In 1973 he also visited Barcelona and later showed a series of surrealist works inspired by the two trips at the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Belfast. Middleton lived for the last twelve years of life in Bangor, County Down. Death and legacy Colin Middleton died of leukaemia in Belfast City Hospital in December 1983. He was survived by his wife Kate, their daughter and a step-daughter. Middleton's son predeceased him by a year. Christie's of London were entrusted with the sale of his studio works in 1985. The works were displayed before auction in both Dublin and Belfast during August of that year. In 2005 the Ulster History Circle unveiled a commemorative blue plaque at Middleton's former home on Victoria Road in Bangor. In the 1970s the Arts Council of Northern Ireland commissioned a documentary film portrait of Middleton entitled Trace of a Thorn, which was written and narrated by the Belfast poet Michael Longley. Middleton's works can be seen in many private and public collections including the Ulster Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery of Victoria, Herbert Art Gallery and Oxford University. Awards Middleton won the Royal Dublin Society's Taylor Scholarship worth £50 in 1932, and two further awards of £10 in 1933. In 1935 Middleton was elected associate of the Ulster Academy, inducted alongside Helen Brett, Kathleen Bridle, Patrick Marrinan, Maurice Wilks, Romeo Toogood and William St. John Glenn, and in 1948 he became an elected Academician at