A three-quarter-length portrait of Hugh Palliser (1723–1796) in admiral’s undress uniform, 1783–7, holding a telescope in his right hand and resting his left arm on a cannon with a fleet of ships in the distance. Lettered beneath the image with title: ‘Sir Hugh Palliser Bart. Vice Admiral of the White Squadron of his Majesty's Fleet & Governor of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich’. Also lettered with the production details and publication line: ‘Painted & Engraved by J.R. Smith Mezzotinto Engraver to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales / London Publish’d Septr. 1st 1787, by J.R. Smith, No.31, King Street Covent Garden.’ This portrait was engraved by John Raphael Smith after his own painting and published by him on 1 September 1787. Palliser was appointed Governor of Greenwich Hospital in 1780, as one of the last acts of his patron Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, before the fall of Lord North's government. Palliser, who rose to Admiral in 1787, had retained Sandwich's support in the face of the public opprobrium which made him loser in the 'Keppel Affair' - the recriminations following the Battle of Ushant in 1778, in which he was a vice-admiral and Keppel's second-in-command. He repaid the debt by commissioning Gainsborough to paint Sandwich's portrait for the Hospital in 1783 (see BHC3009). On his death in 1796, he left a number of other paintings relating to his own career to the Hospital. (Updated May 2019.)