A large full-length portrait slightly to right in a blue velvet coat fastened with gold clips and a long full-bottomed wig. He holds a drape around him with his right hand and a telescope in his left. He stands on a raised platform in classical-patterned or panelled room, with a pilaster to the left decorated with a floral swag and, below, a foliage panel with a cherub. There is a window opening on the right, with a marine scene painted beyond. A private two-decker of 1670s type is shown flying a pre-1707 red ensign and pennants. Other shipping can be seen in the distance. This scene and the sitter's attribute of a telescope indicate that he has connections with the sea but the setting and his luxurious clothes also reveal that he is a man of high social status.

The painting is part of the Greenwich Hospital Collection and was listed in 1912 as 'subject and painter unknown, but supposed to be Admiral Isaac Townsend'. Townsend was the Governor of Greenwich Hospital and best remembered for holding Admiral Byng under arrest there, in humiliating conditions, prior to his court-martial and subsequent execution at Portsmouth in 1757. His date of birth is unknown but he died in 1765, which given the apparent age of the sitter here and a pre-1707 date for the painting makes this identification questionable.