Paintings of a religious character were to the fore in two sales during the past week, and the prices they achieved suggest that in the present climate almost everything can find a home. It might be imagined that pictures showing the Crucifixion or the Madonna and Child would not necessarily be popular with purchasers. However, at the RDS in Dublin on Wednesday, the highest price made from the collection of the late Bishop Jeremiah Newman being sold by auctioneer Loughlin Bowe was for an oil after the 16th-century Italian artist Federico Barocci, depicting the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. It fetched £5,520, midpoint in its pre-sale estimate, while another religious work, a 19th-century Italian oil of the Crucifixion went well past the expected price of £300-£500 to make £1,955. In addition, an 18th-century English school Madonna and Child in pastel fetched £1,725. There were pictures of a non-religious nature also in the sale, such as an oil on canvas showing a Hulk in the Thames Estuary from the circle of Samuel Prout and therefore dating from the first half of the 19th century. It sold for £3,450, while Claus Meyer's charming Figures in an Interior, dating from 1892, made £2,530.
Regretfully, the day's best work, Henry Nelson O'Neil's Home Again, failed to find a buyer; this mid-Victorian canvas showing troops stepping off ship having returned to India was a considerable success when first shown in London but genre pictures of this kind are obviously not in favour at the moment.
As the wide range of his paintings revealed, Dr Newman was an avid if somewhat indiscriminate collector.
The same might also be said of the late Justice Murnaghan, the contents of whose Dublin home on Upper Fitzwilliam Street were sold by Mealy's and Christie's jointly on Thursday. This much-publicised auction turned out to be a considerable success, with many lots selling for two or three times their pre-sale estimates.
The 150 pictures were kept until last but prices remained buoyant, particularly for the religious pictures, of which the judge, like the bishop, was so fond. One of the earliest lots among the paintings, number 322, was a 16th-century Flemish oil on panel of the Holy Family; attributed to Pieter Coecke Van Aelst, it soared past its pre-sale estimate of £2,500-£6,000 to fetch £16,100. From the circle of Botticelli, a Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, went for £34,500, and a pair of Neapolitan 15th-century panels showing Saints Francis and Onophrius sold for £29,900. A particularly delightful Mannerist Madonna and Child from the circle of the Florentine Il Pontormo reached £27,600, and £59,800 was paid for what was probably the best picture of all, another Madonna and Child with Infant Saint John, this time by Michele di Ridolfo Tosini.
While these prices may not indicate the beginnings of a trend in favour of religious art, they certainly show that no category of painting is unpopular at the moment.
