Rectangular upright enamel miniature in a plain gilded wooden frame. It bears a full inscription on the reverse: ' "John Willett Payne Esq" Rear Admiral, Treasurer of Greenwich Hospital, Vice Admiral of the Coasts of Cornwall and Devonshire, Comptroller Gen'l of the Household of the Prince of Wales and Lord Warden of the Stanneries. Painted for his Royal Highness London March 1804. Painted by Henry Bone ARA, Enamel Painter to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, after a Picture by John Hoppner, RA, Portrait Painter to His Royal Highness.'

The sitter is shown three-quarter length standing, turned to his right but looking out to the viewer, against a dark cliff with sea to the left. He has blue eyes and grey hair (possibly powdered) and wears flag-officer's full-dress of 1795-1812 (no hat) with the star of a rear-admiral on the visible left epaulette and, on his left lapel, his captain's gold medal for command of the 'Russell', at the Battle of the Glorious First of June, 1794.

Payne was second son of Ralph Payne (d. 1760), chief justice of St Kitts, Leeward Islands, where he was born. He was educated at Dr Brackyn's academy in Greenwich and the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, and became a lieutenant in 1777, a commander in 1779 and a captain in 1780. By the end of the American War in 1783 he had proved his abilities and gallantry, and a talent for making influential and lasting - but also rakish - friends. In the early 1780s he began a twenty-year friendship with George, Prince of Wales, and from 1786 became his private secretary and keeper of the privy seal, and subsequently also comptroller of his household. He was among those who were active pressing for a regency during George III's first attack of porphyria in 1788-89 and in autumn 1791 also became auditor and secretary of the Duchy of Cornwall (traditional source of the Prince's income). In the Russell, 74, he distinguished himself under Howe at the Battle of 1 June 1794, boarding the French 'L' Amerique', and in 1795 he commanded the flotilla that brought Princess Caroline of Brunswick to England to marry the Prince. His disapproval of the latter's behaviour to his bride, however, led to his dismissal from all his royal offices in 1796, and from then until 1798 he made seasonal patrol cruises in the western approaches commanding the 80-gun Impetueux (which, as L'Amerique, he had helped capture in 1794). Failing health then brought him ashore but in 1799 he was promoted rear-admiral and also reconciled with the Prince, who secured him Treasurership of Greenwich Hospital and established him as a close London neighbour. He died, probably at Greenwich, on 17 November 1803 and was buried at St Margaret's, Westminster.

The original oil of Payne by Hoppner, presumably painted for the Prince about 1799-1800, is in the Royal Collection (other versions in the Courtauld Insitute and at Weston Park, Shropshire). This is a fine copy by Bone (1755-1834), who became a full RA in 1811. Enormously prolific, he did many enamel reductions of oil paintings as well as original miniature portraits, for a distinguished clientele, and was the most celebrated British enamellist of his day. He exhibited it as 'The late Admiral Payne' at the Royal Academy in 1804 (no. 353).