(Updated January 2023) Peter Rainier was of Huguenot descent and son and grandson of merchants from Sandwich in Kent. He was a second son, with two younger brothers and a sister (Sarah) the youngest child. He had a long and active career in the Navy ending with nearly twelve years as a successful Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies, from 1794 until he returned to England and retired in 1805. Originally this was as a rear-admiral but he advanced to vice-admiral in 1799 and to retired admiral in the post-Trafalgar promotions of November 1805. He continued to be consulted on East Indian matters to his death in 1808, when he left one tenth of a then immense fortune (£250,000 at probate, acquired in prize-money and other official perquistes), to the government to help reduce the National Debt.

As he died unmarried the other beneficiaries were his siblings and nephews of whom the latter prime co-heirs were Dr Peter Rainier (1777-1837) and Rear-Admiral John Spratt Rainier (1777-1822, see MNT0199). Both were the sons, born early and late in 1777, of his elder brother Daniel (1739-1802). An 1806 codicil to his will (1802) excluded his other nephew - son of his brother John - Captain Peter Rainier (see BHC2962) from at least some of his prior intended inheritance, on the grounds that he had himself by then 'been so successful in India'.

This print shows Rainier as a vice-admiral in the 1795-1812 full-dress uniform. It is primarily from an oil painting reported in possession of Basil Cochrane (a friend of the sitter) when engraved in 1824 for Brenton's 'Naval History' but of which the artist's name appears by then to have been lost. From 1951 until 1986 it was on loan to the Museum with three Cochrane portraits from the Cochrane-Baillie family. After Thomas Hickey's 1806 portrait of the sitter's nephew Captain Peter Rainier was presented by another donor in 1952, it was firmly attributed to Hickey based on direct comparison of the two. Hickey (1741-1824) was a widely travelled Irish painter who returned permanently to India in 1798: after that, and up to his death he lived and largely worked in Madras (Chennai), which was the main British naval base on the eastern coast. This was the most obvious place (where he would also have been the most obvious man) to paint both Rainier senior between 1799 and 1804, and his nephew Peter two years later.

A very similar but smaller portrait of Rainier (14 x 12 1/8 in. / 35.6 x 30.8 cm) was painted by Arthur William Devis for Rainier's last flag-captain, Captain (later Admiral) Benjamin William Page, possibly as early as late 1805 (the date on its frame). This broadly copies the Hickey, but shows Rainier older, with far more waistcoat buttons (and more done up) and with a cameo-headed pin in his cravat. Though still also showing him as a vice-admiral, these differences suggest Devis updated the image from life but when Rainier still held Hickey's version for him to base it on. Page (d. 1845) later gave this Devis copy to the Revd W.S. Halliday of Glenthorne, Lynton, Devon and it remained in his family until sold at Christie's on 10 July 2015 (Old Master and British Paintings, lot 184). It too was also formerly on loan to the NMM (as BHC2411) for a relatively short period up to 1980 (negs. B1463 and B1464). Rainier's original DNB entry (1896) wrongly implies that the Devis version was the prime source of the present engraving, probably because it has a late-19th-century public exhibition history (which the Hickey does not) and the differences between the two were overlooked, though they may be accountable by the engraver having also seen the Devis copy.

The portrait lent to NMM (1951-86) and attributed by it to Hickey passed through auction at Christie's, London on 1 March 1991 (lot 25) and is now in the College of Optometrists, London, on account of the interest of the sitter's spectacles, which are fitted with 'Martin's margins' - the usually tortoiseshell surrounds invented by Benjamin Martin to help reduce glare. While a rather more stolid likeness than Hickey's 1806 portrait of Captain Peter Rainier, extensive further discussion (2021-22 on Art UK) of that of his uncle concluded that it is likely to be the only Hickey version and the one in Basil Cochrane's hands by 1824 when it became prime (but perhaps not sole) source for the present print. PAD 4289 is another 19th-century print even more closely from it but about which nothing else is yet known.

Apart from Page's oil copy of the Hickey original by Devis there is also a second and similarly age-adjusted Devis copy in the Wellington collection at Stratfield Saye, where it was first inventoried in 1841 but without any identification of artist up to the present. While also so far unclear how it got there, it too may have been a gift from Page to Arthur Wellesley, later first Duke of Wellington, whose return from India in 1805 was as a passenger in Admiral Rainier's flagship 'Trident' (64 guns), commanded by Page. All three therefore spent the six-month voyage home in close personal company. They sailed on 10 March and reached the Downs on 9 September, where Rainier struck his flag for the last time on the 18th and retired ashore.