A portrait of the English 96-gun, first-rate ship ‘London’, which was built in 1670 and rebuilt in 1706. It is identifiable as this vessel from the similarity of the ports, the latrine in the main chains and the lack of an entering port on the starboard side to a drawing of the same ship in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam (441).

The drawing is probably based on a faint offset, lightly worked up in wash, much in the manner of Van de Velde the Younger. Robinson, however, suggests that the latter’s involvement is probably confined to a few touches with pen and brown ink, and dates the drawing to 1676 on the basis of its similarity in execution to a drawing of the ‘Charles’ of that year (PAJ2300), also attributed by him primarily to the Elder.