Portrait of Robert Curling, generally acknowledged to be the founder of the London Shipowners' and River Users' Society. It was acquired as a gift with minute books of the organization and as received shows minor damage from the Provisonal IRA 'white-van' bomb at St Mary Axe in 1992. It is a standard 30 x 25-inch head-and-shoulders portrait. The sitter is an elderly man in a black coat of style about 1800, turned to viewer's left but facing front, seated in a red-backed chair and holding a paper in his visible left hand with title 'Navigation Act'. He may be the London merchant Robert Curling (1741–1809) who was also apparently one of the partners in Cox and Curling's shipyard at Limehouse, though the identity remains to be confirmed. What is certain is that though the Society is stated on the PLA website to have been formally founded in 1811, and still continues (its 184th AGM was in 2011), Curling was chairing meetings of the committee of London shipowners in 1803 and of the Society of Shipowners of Great Britain (founded 1802) in 1804.