A three-quarter-length portrait to left showing Ball in rear-admiral's full-dress uniform, 1795-1812. He is depicted wearing cuffs and buttons that are incorrect for a rear-admiral of this period. Ball commanded the 'Alexander', 74 guns, under Nelson in the Mediterranean, whose flagship he saved from being wrecked in a storm. After participating in the Battle of the Nile, 1798, he was engaged in the blockade of Malta and became the civil commissioner and thus in effect the governor there, when it surrendered in 1801. He wears the Nile medal. His left arm cradles a telescope and he is leaning against a cannon while his right hand holds the lower end of the telescope. The harbour visible in the background to the left is probably Valletta.

Pickersgill studied under the landscape artist George Arnald, 1802-05, and entered the Royal Academy school in 1805. He established a highly successful practice as a portrait painter, and after the portrait painter Thomas Philips's death was so much in demand that he died a wealthy man.