The St Mary's Paintings (History 1)

With building work nearing completion the decoration well under way, it seemed the appropriate time to do something about three large paintings in the gallery. As the large central painting had been damaged by the building workers during repairs to the gallery, Bill Mercer decided to arrange for its restoration and it was taken down and sent to Alexander Galleries, in Whiteladies Road.

The other two were later removed by decorators and brought into the sacristy. The picture of Our Lady is a late 19th century copy of a painting by Murillo, a late 17th century Spanish artist- the original was on display in London recently. The painting of the Infant Christ with St. Joseph is a work of the late 19th century and although not a copy of an earlier painting is of very poor quality.

With the central picture away, I started on the other two. After cleaning off much dirt and old varnish, I was able to see their general condition. Both paintings have been badly treated in the past – much of the foreground of St. Joseph had been erased and had been touched in with black household paint. This I removed and retouched the missing grass and rocks in more suitable colours.

The painting of our Lady was in a similar state, but in addition the copyist had painted only the main figure and attending cherubs. He had not put in the sky background that is in the original. Had the background been a lighter shade of grey, and not partly erased, I would have been content, but the figure of our Lady was lost in this messy background so I decided to paint in the missing sky. I had to work fast as the decorators were ready to re-hang them and had already painted the frames for them. It is not the usual thing to add to another artist’s work, but as this one was only a poor quality studio copy, and the original having a sky, I decided that it would be a visual improvement.

Of the three paintings, the large central one has responded best to cleaning. The lighter colours are purer and it is of better quality than the other two. All three pictures are probably the work of an Italian studio, where artists of varying skills would produce pictures for 19th century tourists to send home to their churches. Due to their size and subject, this kind of painting has little commercial value.

(Charles Knott, Parish Magazine, “A.M.D.G. ST. MARY-ON-THE-QUAY BRISTOL”, Vol. 32 No. 9, September 1983, pp. 1 & 15).