A 40-year hunt for a lost family portrait has ended in success in Auckland for an Englishman who had given up hope of seeing the 224-year-old painting again.
The owner recognised the portrait when it featured in a story in the Herald's print edition on Wednesday.
Rupert Peploe, of Bristol, had tracked
down the portrait of his "eight-times grandfather" Samuel Peploe, the archdeacon of Chester Cathedral, to an Auckland family.
The oil on canvas was painted in 1780 and had been handed down from generation to generation of the Peploe family. It was discovered to be missing in 1968 and was believed to have been mixed up with other items being stored by another family and taken to New Zealand when that family emigrated.
It surfaced in Auckland in 1978 when it was bought by Aucklander William Petersen. He wrote to the National Portrait Gallery in Britain to get some history of the painting but the gallery could not help. Mr Petersen died in 2002.
Now Mr Peploe has been told "an Auckland family bought it at auction in 1994 and they were amazed to see a picture of it".
"The family seem fairly happy for me to swap the painting but everything is still up in the air at the moment, I am just keeping my fingers crossed," he said.
- NZPA
