A rectangular bust-length miniature in watercolour and bodycolour on ivory (with a vertical central split) in a gilt moulded wooden picture frame.The sitter is shown in the 1812-25 commanders' and captains' full dress, with the plain epaulettes of the former. Though the colour has been affected by light, he has green eyes and red hair and looks younger than a man whom the uniform date suggests would have had to be at least 66. An inscribed paper label on the back states: ‘This is the likeness of Capt. John Larkan RN, who as a midshipman was sent out with Capt. Edward Edwards in search of the Mutineers of the Bounty in the ship Pandora.’ There is also the signature ‘AH Fleming July 2nd 1895' presumably a relative of the donor to the Museum, Miss A. M. Fleming of Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Larkan was from an Irish protestant family in Athlone, Co. Roscommon, where he was born in May 1746. His father and grandfather were cordwainers (bootmakers), the former also being a Justice of the Peace. He entered the Navy as a boy servant under his uncle by marriage, Captain John Ardesoif, and was later followed into it by his younger brother Robert (see BHC2830 and MNT0006). Both were commissioned in 1780; John, then 34, as fourth lieutenant of the 'Cumberland'. In November 1790 he sailed as first lieutenant (not midshipman) under Edwards in the 'Pandora', 20 guns, to search for Fletcher Christian and the 'Bounty' mutineers. The 14 'Bounty' men found on Tahiti, while not all mutineers, were indiscriminately confined in a makeshift lock-up on deck dubbed ‘Pandora’s box’. One of the most articulate culprits among them, James Morrison, called Larkan an uncaring man with a harsh streak, which Midshipman Dillon's memoirs tend to confirm. Unable to find the 'Bounty', the 'Pandora' was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef in August 1791, with losses that included several men who failed to escape the 'box'. Larkan commanded one of the ship’s boats on the 1,110 mile voyage to the safety of the Dutch East Indies settlement of Coupang, Timor (the same port that Bligh first reached after the 'Bounty' mutiny). A number of items probably relating to Larkan, including his metal name plate, have been recovered from modern excavation of the 'Pandora' site and are now in the Queensland Museum. Larkan went on to serve as James (later Lord) Gambier's first lieutenant in the 74-gun 'Defence', including at the Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794. Both he and his brother Robert, first lieutenant of the 'Leviathan' there, were among those rewarded by promotion to commander on 6 July 1794 but John saw no further sea service. From 1803 until at least 1807 he was in charge of Sea Fencibles (coastal defence volunteers) in Galway. In 1784 he married Elizabeth Knott at St Mary's, Athlone, with whom he had three daughters and two sons. He died aged 83, at Larkfield, his small property near Athlone on 1 November 1830 and was buried with his wife at Westmeath: she had predeceased him, aged 52, in 1815. His elder son, Edward, inherited Larkfield. John’s unmarried second daughter, Elizabeth Diana Larkan, died at Maze Hill, Greenwich, in 1852 and there is also a miniature of her in the collection associated with this one (MNT0006). She had probably come to Greenwich to be close to her uncle Robert, who died as one of the four Captains of Greenwich Hospital.

Name coincidence suggests the donor was a descendant of her elder sister Abigail (1790-1825) who married an Archibald Fleming but is buried with her parents at Westmeath. Their joint tombstone calls Larkan 'Captain', a courtesy title given that commander was his final substantive rank. The artist of MNT0007 is unknown but it is clearly by a fairly modest hand, almost certainly Irish given the date dictated by the uniform. MNT0006 may be by the same maker.