According to his diary, John Russell RA (1745-1806) painted a pastel portrait of Rev John Dunkin in 1769. Writing in 1894, George C Williamson records this, and says that the painting is 'missing'.
So perhaps it's on somebody's wall somewhere. Other than watching 'Antiques Roadshow' every week, does anyone have any idea how it might be traced?
The National Portrait Gallery has records of British portraits in public and private collections around the world, mostly derived from exhibitions or sale rooms. A helpful email from the NPG confirms that 'a portrait would have been a valuable possession', suggesting that it might still survive, but says that they have no record of it.
Maybe the picture has lost its attribution; as the NPG says "identities and attributions can slip and what was once recognised as a specific ancestor may much later be known only as 'portrait of an unknown man'". An online search for Russell portraits of unknown sitters has turned up nothing that looks likely.
In the NPG collection is a Russell portrait of 1769 (in oils) of William Dodd, which gives us his style at the time. John Dunkin's obituary in The European Magazine and London Review, Jan 1809, says that he died aged 82; by that count he would have been 42 when the portrait was made (though a baptism record of Sep 1730 suggests that he may have been a year or two younger).
The minister of the Jamaica Row meeting at which John Dunkin preached was Rev John Townsend. There is an engraving of Townsend in his memoirs (artist unknown), from which we may perhaps infer the style of dress that Dunkin would have adopted.
http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2012/09/07/rev-john-townsend-1757-1826-founder-of-the-london-asylum/So we have an artist, a date, a stylistic reference point, an age for the sitter, and a clue as to his mode of dress.
Just no picture...
Any thoughts?
