English School, c.1840

A career officer and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Nunn (and his 80th Regiment) was garrisoned in New South Wales from 1837 to 1844. In the colony Brevet-Major James Nunn (1789-1847) was seconded to command the NSW Mounted Police and took charge of operations to protect squatters on the colony's frontier from attacks by Aboriginals and bushrangers. He gained notoriety for his offensive with just twenty-two troopers against an Aboriginal encampment on 26 January 1838 at Snodgrass Lagoon on Waterloo Plains which left at least 200 dead -- the operation variously known as "the Battle of Vinegar Hill", the "Liverpool Massacre" and "Major Nunn's Campaign".

There is a variant of this portrait, by the same unidentified hand, also depicting Nunn in a New South Wales landscape, encamped and with a mounted dragoon and trooper beyond, in the National Library of Australia (nla.pic-an9900674).