This aquatint is based on a drawing that Wilkie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824, entitled 'A study for Commodore Trunnion, made in Greenwich Hospital'. The image includes Wilkie's signature and the date 1823, lower right, presumably also copied from the original drawing. The sitter appears to have a rug over his lap since his legs are not distinguishable below his open Hospital frock coat. He also wears a cocked hat, transom forwards and collapsed into a wide brim, a waistcoat and white stock. His striking looks match piercing eyes with a ruddy complexion and a bulbous 'toper's nose'.

Commodore Hawser Trunnion is the famously eccentric, one-eyed, retired sea officer in Tobias Smollett's 1751 novel 'The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle’, who became a subject both for later artists and literary reference. Captain Fitzroy Henry Lee, and a Captain Hore of the Royal Navy have at times been suggested as possible real-life models for him.

The title is below the main image, with an inscription, 'Engraved by F.C. Lewis from the Original Drawing in the Collection of Edward Hawke Locker Esqr, FRS'. Locker was Secretary and of the Hospital and its senior Commissioner from 1829 to 1844. Locker's daughter Ellen (Mrs Ellen Dobie b.1819, m.1843) in a brief family memoir of her childhood recalled Wilkie's visit to stay with her father at Greenwich, with his sister, who played Scottish reels on the family piano she still had at the time of writing in 1883.