Alfred Elmore’s Religious Controversy and the Fr Thomas Maguire Debates

Religious Controversy in the Time of Louis XIV (location now unknown) was painted by the Clonakilty born artist Alfred Elmore and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849.1 Alfred Elmore was also a shareholder in Daniel O’Connell’s National Bank from as early as 1836 and his father was a close associate of O’Connell and an ardent supporter of Catholic Emancipation.2 In 1840 Elmore exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy exhibition in London that was commissioned by O’Connell and which would eventually be hung in St Andrew’s church, Westland Row, in Dublin, where it remains to this day.