Newbury painting sells for £10,000 at Christies

A 200-year-old painting that depicts an old form of punishment in Newbury has sold for £10,000 at auction.
The painting, called ‘At the pillory, Newbury, Berkshire’, was estimated to fetch £4,000 - £6,000 when it went up for sale at Christie’s in London last week, but was bought for almost double that figure by a private bidder.
The eight by 12 inch pencil, pen and ink watercolour picture is by Thomas Rowlandson, one of Britain’s most famous caricaturists.
Christie’s has confirmed that a comparison with an oil painting of The Old Town Hall, Newbury, at the West Berkshire Museum, indicates that the setting is Newbury although Rowlandson has taken liberties with architectural details.
Rowlandson’s Newbury picture is among more than 600 antique possessions which belonged to the late Sir Albert Richardson, a distinguished architect and former President of the Royal Academy.
The bids department at Christie’s confirmed that there were a couple of room bidders, a handful of telephone bidders and that there were commission bids on the lot.
The watercolour shows a form of punishment used in Newbury 200 years ago, whereby miscreants were put in a pillory in a high and prominent position in the town centre and publicly humiliated.
It was the best performing Rowlandson piece of the day, but failed to beat the £58,850 current world auction record paid for his work at a Christie’s auction in 2011.