The English painter and draughtsman Francis Swaine was a pupil of Peter Monamy. He worked as a messenger in the Navy Office in 1735 and was practising as a marine painter by the late 1740s. He regularly exhibited in the Free and Incorporated Societies of Artists from 1761. Swaine’s work was an interpretation of formulae made popular in England by Willem van de Velde the Younger, but it shows an informed knowledge of English shipping.

In this image of a naval review at Spithead the artist employs bright colours for the depiction of the vessels’ flags and the sailors’ costumes. The sky is rendered in a bright blue with white summer cumulus clouds and the sea shows the artist’s characteristically crisp waves.