A half-length portrait slightly to right showing Gordon wearing rear-admiral's full-dress uniform, 1833-43, together with his collar and star as a Knight Commander of the Bath and the Lissa medal. His left hand rests on his sword belt.

At an early age he was present in the 'Goliath', 74 guns, at the Battles of St Vincent in 1797 and the Nile, 1798. While commanding the frigate 'Active', 38 guns, in the Mediterranean, he played a distinguished part in Captain William Hoste's action off Lissa in 1811. Hoste's three frigates and a 22-gun sixth-rate comprised the sole Royal Naval strength in the Adriatic. They fought an action against an attacking Franco-Venetian squadron off the island of Lissa, where the British were based and although outnumbered managed to defeat the invaders. All four British captains were awarded gold medals. In the same year Gordon lost a leg while capturing the Franco-Venetian 'Pomone', 40 guns, near Corfu, and in 1814 he commanded a squadron against the Americans. He was later the last Governor of Greenwich Hospital, dying just before it closed in 1869. Exceptionally, he was buried (under a handsome granite tombstone) in the officers' enclosure of its old burial ground, adjacent to the National Maritime Museum, although other burials there had ceased in 1857.

The artist was both a portrait painter and the son of a master mariner, and this painting is signed and dated 1839.