News

Portrait of John Randall Dunn Added to Longyear Collection

May 25, 2009

The Family-Held Oil Painting Was Donated So Others Might Have the Opportunity to Learn of This Pioneer Christian Scientist.


The warm smile and spiritual poise that radiate from the portrait of Christian Science lecturer John Randall Dunn, C.S.B., are the very qualities that bring the fondest memories to John Lyons, Dunn's great-nephew.

Mr. Lyons and his wife, Sylvia, who have had this painting (photo of portrait at left) hanging in their living room since 1991, donated it to Longyear two weeks ago. Mr. Lyons said he hopes Longyear's larger venue will allow others to see something of the remarkable man who was his great-uncle.

"The painting gives me a small hint of the man that was John Randall Dunn," Mr. Lyons said in a recent interview from his home in California. Mr. Lyons recalled spending time with Mr. Dunn until he was four years old when his great-uncle passed away. But his memory of Mr. Dunn's character remains vivid.

 "The greatest memory I would say was of his love," Mr. Lyons commented, "the most incredible love I have ever felt before or since, which, of course, was one of the things that made him a draw [as a Christian Science Lecturer], because that reflected love was all there was to John Randall Dunn."

The 36-by-42-inch oil-on-canvas portrait of this pioneer Christian Scientist, Christian Science lecturer, editor of the Christian Science periodicals, author of two hymns, and First Reader in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, was painted by artist Betty Peters sometime between 1910 and 1920.

The Dunn family was introduced to Christian Science by a remarkable set of circumstances that led to a healing from severe poisoning. The Dec. 16, 1916, Christian Science Sentinel records that John Randall Dunn's father, James Randall Dunn, introduced his son as a new Christian Science lecturer to an audience at Fourth Church of Christ Scientist, St. Louis, in 1916.

In his introduction, the father said that a dozen years earlier, he had been brought "out of the shadow of virtual invalidism into health and strength through Christian Science treatment." From the time of this healing, he said, his son had "devoted his young manhood to the work of spreading this gospel of light and life and love ..."

According to Mr. Lyons, the family history of this incident involved his great- uncle's father being intentionally poisoned. James Randall Dunn had been a close childhood friend of William McKinley, President of the United States from 1897 to 1901. When the McKinley administration asked Mr. Dunn to serve as a West Coast immigration commissioner, he obliged his childhood friend. His duties included enforcing immigration legislation that apparently resulted in creating enemies who made attempts on his life.

As Mr. Lyons relates, one evening in San Francisco, James Randall Dunn unwittingly ingested a colorless, odorless poison that, physicians said, destroyed the lining of his stomach. They told him nothing further could be done.

But after this news reached James Dunn's wife in a San Francisco hotel dining room, a Christian Science practitioner sitting nearby, who had overheard the conversation, walked over and asked Mrs. Dunn, "My dear, would you like me to pray for your husband?"

Although she knew nothing of Christian Science, Caroline Brown Dunn responded, "Absolutely."

"The practitioner went to work," Mr. Lyons continued, "and Mr. Dunn came down for breakfast the next morning and every morning thereafter for the next 30 years.

"My [great-]uncle John [Randall Dunn] was so grateful and overwhelmed by that, he said, 'If Christian Science can do this for my father, I am going to go the length and breadth of the land telling people about it.' "

"And he sure did," Mr. Lyons said.

 

View All News