Oval miniature in watercolour on paper, in an oval wooden presentation frame. The sitter is shown long bust-length turned to her right but looking back over her left shoulder to viewer's right. She wears a light red outdoor gown or overdress tied at the waist and a straw hat tied by a scarf under the chin. She has dark hair and apparently hazel or brown eyes, but the drawing as a whole is badly faded and more a study than a finished miniature in the usual sense. It may be the miniature which Orme exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799, in the enthusiasm for Nelson aroused by his victory at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, or a study for it.

Frances, nee Woolward, was born on the West Indian island of Nevis and first married there in 1779 to Josiah Nisbet, a doctor, by whom she had a son, also Josiah, later a naval officer. Her husband died while they were visiting England in 1781 and in 1787, again on Nevis, she married Horatio Nelson, then commanding the frigate 'Boreas'. The marriage started well, though it produced no children and 'Fanny' remained devoted to her husband, nursing him through early sickness and the period of recovery after loss of his arm in 1797, which was perhaps their happiest time together. She was always anxious about him, however, rather than applauding his thirst for glory, which did not help the normal strains of separation even before he became intimately involved at Naples with Lady Hamilton in 1799. She was devasted by his complete desertion of her at the turn of 1800-01, for which she bore no blame, but remained close to his father until the latter's death in 1802 and a socially well-respected figure thereafter. Nelson at least made financial provision for her, and she also received a government pension after his death at Trafalgar in 1805. Despite Nelson's help, her son Josiah was not a successful naval officer, but became a more successful businessman. His death from pleurisy in 1830 hastened her own the following year, and she was buried beside him at Littleham, Devon, where they had lived together for some years previously.