Captain William Hay is first mentioned in Hardy’s East India Register as third mate of the East Indiaman ‘Rockingham’, which sailed from Portsmouth to Calcutta on 27 June 1796. In 1805 he had his first command in the ‘Retreat’, a new ship owned by Robert Wigram, which sailed for Madeira and Bombay in April, returning in May 1806. Between this date and 1828 he made many more voyages to the East. For details of his career see ‘A register of ships employed in the service of the Honourable the United East India Company, from the year 1760 to 1810’ by Charles Hardy.

Hay is shown half-length in the full dress uniform of a commander in the Honourable East India Company’s service, the coat buttoned across. He wears a white waistcoat and neck cloth. The portrait is signed and dated ‘WA Hobday 1815’.

William Hobday (1771–1831) was born in Birmingham, the son of a manufacturer. He was first apprenticed to an engraver, entered the Royal Academy Schools aged 18 in 1790 and became a fashionable miniature and watercolour portraitist. He worked in London and Bath, and moved to Bristol in 1804 where he painted portraits of officers embarking for the Peninsular War. He returned to London in 1817 where he became bankrupt in 1829, after a lifetime of extravagance. His sons Alfred and George were both artists.