Inscribed, top left ,'LORD FISHER/ JUNE 1916' , and top right 'DODD / 1916'. Fisher is shown aged 75, almost half-length, facing out but seated sideways on a plain wooden chair with his right arm crooked and resting on the back (though as a drypoint the whole is printed in reverse). He is in civilian dress, with a long jacket over a waistcoat, a cravat tie and an indistinguishable flower in what is, in fact, his left lapel button-hole. Jacob Epstein did a bust of Fisher in 1915 of which the Museum has a plaster version (SCU0018). He wrote that he 'had an extraordinary appearance. His light eyes, with strange colours, were set in a face like parchment ivory, and his iron-grey hair was cut short and bristled on his head. He was short, but had ... combative sturdiness ... He was the typical man of war. He made no bones about it. War was terrible, and should be terrible ... He continuously quoted scriptures, but chracteristically only from the Old Testament. Proverbs fell from his lips copiously ... there was a look in his eye that was dangerous': ('How I Sculpted Lord Fisher' in 'The Weekly Dispatch', 24 Dec. 1916; cf. 'Let there be Sculpture' [Epstein' s autobiography], 1940). Despite this, Fisher had great charm and social skill, which offset his driving and sometimes divisive personality, and he was one of the greatest administrators in the history of the Navy and one of its greatest reformers, especially in early 20th-century 'big-gun' ship development and personnel training. Having started as a gunnery specialist, he was instrumental in developing torpedoes. After serving in the 1882 Egyptian campaign and as head of the Portsmouth gunnery school he became Admiralty director of gunnery and torpedoes, 1886-90. He was subsequently Third Sea Lord, commander-in-chief in North America and West Indies, and in the Mediterranean, before becoming Second and then First Sea Lord. In this role he was instrumental in advocating and building the 'Dreadnought'-type battleships, introduced from 1906, and the King Edward VII class of 1909-10. He commanded the Channel Fleet in 1907 and retired in 1911 at the age of 70. However, on the outbreakof the First World War - which he predicted with great accuracy - he became First Sea Lord again for seven month until resigning over disagreement with Churchill on the latter's plans for atacking the Turks at Gallipoli - in which his fears were rapidly realized. Thereafter he served as chairman of the Government's Board of Invention and Research until the end of the war, his role at the time Dodd drew this portrait. The Museum also has A.S. Cope's 1902 oil portrait of Fisher (BHC2690; Greenwich Hospital Collection).