A three-quarter length portrait slightly to left. Lawson wears a sleeveless leather jerkin, breastplate, red sash, the sleeves of his coat are heavily barred with gold. He holds a baton in his right hand and his left rests on a cannon. The background is of a rock face with a ship in action on the left. The portrait is a copy of the original in the Royal Collection and is probably posthumous.

Lawson fought in the Parliamentary navy throughout the Civil Wars. He was in all the great actions in home waters that occurred in the First Dutch War and for his services received the gold medal and chain that Parliament bestowed after the war to certain officers. He fell into disgrace with Cromwell in 1655 but by 1659 after both Oliver and Richard Cromwell had died, he became Commander-in-Chief of the fleet. His prestige in the fleet was high, and in spite of his political and religious views as an Anabaptist, he was sent as second in command to fetch home King Charles II in 1660. He was also second in command of the Duke of York's squadron and vice-admiral of the Red squadron at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665 when he received a wound in the knee that turned gangrenous. He died at Greenwich a month later.

At the Restoration Lely was appointed Principal Painter to Charles II. It is thought that Lely probably painted Lawson’s head in the portrait but the rest of the composition was almost certainly finished by an assistant. If Lawson’s portrait was painted ad vivum after the battle of Lowestoft it must have been while Lawson was suffering from the wound of which he eventually died on 25 June 1665. It was not amongst the ‘heads some finished and all begun’ that Pepys saw in Lely’s studio on 18 April 1666. It is therefore possible that after Lawson’s death the Duke of York decided to add his portrait to the set and commissioned a posthumous portrait from Lely. There is another version at Avebury Manor.