Artware Fineart has dated this Regency Military Officer Portrait to the 19th Century.
Portrait of Lt General Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, GCH KCB FRS FRGS (1772-1841)
oil on canvas
140 x 110 cm. (55.1/4 x 43.1/4 in.)
Notes
Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, (1773–1841), army officer, belonged to a respectable Northumbrian family, said to be of Scottish descent, and originally named Duncan. His father, General Robert Donkin (1726/7–1821), served in Flanders, the West Indies, Ireland, and America, was reputedly a personal friend of the historian David Hume, and published two books about his military experiences. In 1772 he married Mary, daughter of the Revd Emanuel Collins. Rufane Shaw was the eldest of their three children, and the only son. General Robert Donkin had served with many famous British commanders including Wolfe and Gage and his Colonel, William Rufane. Young Rufane was baptised at St David's Church, Exeter on 9 October 1772 with the name Rusaw Shaw Donkin.
On 21 March 1778 Rufane was appointed to an ensigncy in the 44th foot, in which his father then held the rank of major, advancing to lieutenant on 9 September 1779 through purely paper transactions. He was educated at Westminster School in London until the age of fourteen and appears afterwards to have been a diligent student. At one time when on leave from his regiment—probably after its return from Canada in 1786—he studied classics and mathematics in France for a year, and when on detachment in the Isle of Man, read Greek for a year and a half with a Cambridge graduate. He obtained his company on 31 May 1793, and became Captain and in September he sailed for the West Indies with the flank companies of the 44th foot to be involved in the capture of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St Lucia, and the subsequent loss of Guadeloupe in 1794.
After his return to England he was brigade major, and for several months aide-de-camp, to Major-General Thomas Musgrave, commanding at Newcastle upon Tyne, and advanced to major on 1 September 1795. He went back with the regiment to the West Indies in Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby's expedition, which in April and May 1796 recaptured St Lucia (which had been again occupied by the French in 1795); here the 44th lost 20 officers and over 800 men, chiefly from fever. He gained the rank of Major in 1796.
Donkin was removed to Martinique unconscious and afterwards invalided home dangerously ill. Having recovered, in May 1798 Donkin was detached from the regiment to command a provisional light battalion, composed of the light companies 11th foot, 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers, and 49th foot, with Major-General Eyre Coote's expedition to Ostend, which sought to destroy the basin, gates, and sluices of the Bruges Canal, thus hampering the concentration of French troops for an invasion of England. On 20 May Donkin distinguished himself in an action near Ostend, in which he was wounded and taken prisoner but earned Coote's special praise for his conduct. He transferred to the 11th foot as lieutenant-colonel on 24 May and joined it in temporary captivity near Douai.
In 1799 the 11th sailed for the West Indies, but a regimental historian, quoting an official War Office record that he was 'in London on regimental duty' during December 1799, has noted that 'no evidence' exists for his having served in the West Indies in 1799–1800, as claimed in the Dictionary of National Biography (Robinson, 284). There is no doubt, however, that he did command the regiment there in 1801, when the 11th took part in the capture of numerous islands, which were returned to France after the peace of Amiens. On 29 April 1802 Donkin proposed that convicts who had opted to serve in the West Indies should not be kept there for life but be allowed to serve a normal term of en
Artware Fineart has dated this Regency Military Officer Portrait to the 19th Century.
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Henry Hoppner Meyer, 1780 - 1847 Portrait of Lt General Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, Gch Kcb Frs Frgs (1772-1841)
