A three-quarter length portrait of Fairborne. He wears a blue velvet coat with gold laced buttons and button holes and a grey full bottom wig. In his right hand he holds a baton. In the left background is a ship flying the flag of a Vice-Admiral of the Red.

Fairborne saw early service in Tangier against the Moors in the 1680s. He commanded the ‘Warspite’ at the battle of Beachy Head in 1690, and the ‘Elizabeth’ at Cape Barfleur in 1692. During the War of Spanish Succession 1702-13 he recognised the strategic importance of Mediterranean operations and held a variety of commands in the channel culminating in the capture of Ostend in 1706, at which he was the senior naval officer. Here his co-operation with John Marlborough helped to secure a valuable depot for continental transport. This portrait was painted between 1703-08 and shows him as Vice-Admiral of the Red. It is signed ‘Sr Godfrey Kneller f.’ and inscribed ‘Sr Stafford Fairburne, Vice Adml of the Red’. It was presented to the Greenwich Hospital Collection by King George IV in 1824.