A full length slightly to right of Edward Boscawen (1711–1761), wearing flag officer’s undress uniform, 1748–1767, and a wig. He stands on the rocky shore littered with sea creatures, and with his back to a stormy sea. A ship is visible in the distance on the left. Lettered beneath the image: ‘J. Reynolds Pinxt. Js. McArdell fecit. The Honourable Edward Boscawen Admiral of the Blue Squadron of His Majesty’s Fleet, And One of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty’. Boscawen’s coat of arms appears in the middle of the inscription with the date ‘1758’. This portrait was engraved in mezzotint by James Macardell after an original painting by Joshua Reynolds, which was painted between 1755 and 1757. Reynolds’s painting is currently owned by Lord Falmouth but the National Maritime Museum holds a nineteenth-century copy of the picture (see BHC2565). Macardell published an initial version of the print in 1757 with an inscription describing the sitter as ‘Vice-Admiral of the Red’ (see PAH5398). The present version was published one year later in 1758; the inscription has been altered to read ‘Admiral of the Blue’, bringing the print up-to-date with the promotion that Boscawen received on 7 February 1758. In late 1759, the portrait was re-engraved by Macardell as a three-quarter-length on a smaller plate. (Updated April 2019).