Edward Middleditch established himself in the mid 1950s as one of the most powerful young painters and draughtsmen in Britain. Promoted as a 'Kitchen-Sink' painter alongside John Bratby, Derrick Greaves and Jack Smith, he received the critical patronage of John Berger, then the leading promoter of social realism. What Middleditch shared with them was a robust aesthetic, where he differed was in his innate lyricism and poetry as well as in his preference for natural rather than urban or domestic motifs.