(Updated May 2014)Rectangular miniature in gouache (TBC) on ivory, in a black-lacquered rectangular wooden presentation frame with a gilded innner moulding. The sitter is shown bust length, turned to his right but looking to the viewer against a red draped curtain behind, with a sea horizon just visible lower right. He has dark brown hair and wears captain's and commander's 1812-25 undress uniform with the left lapel buttoned over. The two plain epaulettes shows it was done when he was a commander, probably before 1820 and by only a modest hand, possibly amateur and/or a family member. An inscription on the reverse reads: 'Capt C M Walker RN. Born 1778. Married 1811. Died 1833. My father's father (per BGW) Forestier ['Peter's' inserted] Walker's great grandfather. He served under Nelson and at one time commanded a frigate in the Mediterranean'.

Walker was descended from Sir Walter Walker Ll.D, lawyer to Catherine of Braganza , Queen consort of Charles II, whose son George in turn became a baronet. That title became extinct with the latter’s son, who died without issue, and the male line only continued through Sir Walter’s younger grandson William, who was Charles’s great-grandfather. Charles was fifth and youngest child of Major Nathaniel Walker (1740-80) and his wife Henrietta (nee Bagster, m. 1763), only child of Captain John Bagster RN and his wife Dorothy (nee Hall, d. 1804). Nathaniel was agent to the Huntingdon Militia and and lost much property in America after fighting in the loyalist Royal American Rangers during the War of Independence. Though his English property was apparently the manor at Bushey, Herts, he is reported to have died, aged 40, at Jamaica in 1780. He had two daughters and two elder sons who both became army generals: the elder, his successor at Bushey, was Frederick Nathaniel Walker (d. 1857) of the Royal Artillery, the younger was Sir George Townshend Walker (1st baronet, 1764-1842) of the infantry, including in the Peninsular War. Their mother, Henrietta, died aged 80 on 19 May 1829 in grace-and-favour accommodation at Hampton Court Palace, although death notices also refer to her as 'of Bushey' , presumably alluding to the family estate there. The Hampton Court Palace Grace and Favour handbook notes that she had held Apartment 22 (suite VIII) since 1794 and her mother had probably been living with her at the time of her death in 1804 since both are buried in St Mary's, Hampton.

Charles's gravestone in the English cemetery at Florence, shows he was born on 3 February 1780 (though 1779 appears elsewhere). His third name of Hudlestone only appears in modern genealogy sources, and he clearly did not use it:his second appears variably as Montagu or Montague (his gravestone bearing the latter).

He was present at the siege of Toulon in 1793 and served as midshipman on the 'Fortitude', 74, in operations against Corsica, including the attack on Mortella Tower in 1794 which prompted the adoption of 'Martello' towers in England for coastal defence. Subsequently in the West Indies, he was at the capture of St Lucia in May 1796 and Trinidad, February 1797. Under Captain William Hotham in the 'Adamant', 50, at the Cape of Good Hope, he took part in the destruction of the French frigate 'La Preneuse' on 11 December 1799, and (with the 'Lancaster') in a cutting-out operation at Port Louis, Mauritius. Commissioned lieutenant in January 1803, he was appointed second of the 74-gun 'Spencer' under Robert Stopford, which in 1805 took part in Nelson's pre-Trafalgar chase to the West Indies, though not the battle itself. He was still in her in Duckworth's victory at San Domingo in 1806 and Gambier's reduction of Copenhagen in 1807, and in the blockade of Lisbon that winter. From there he brought back a surrendered Russian sloop after the Convention of Cintra and was subsequently appointed (1809-11) to the 'Barfleur' , 98, flagship of Rear-Admiral Charles Tyler and then the 'Colossus', 74, which was part of Sir Richard Keats's squadron defending Cadiz. He was promoted to commander on 1 February 1812 but did not serve again until February 1824, when appointed to the 20-gun, 6th-rate, 'Medina' in the Mediterranean. One of his duties there was conveying Lord Strangford, British Ambassador to Turkey, back from Constantinople to Trieste. He became a captain in the general promotion of 27 May 1825 but without further service.

On 5 October 1811 at St George's, Hanover Square, London, Charles married Anna Maria Riddell, daughter of the improvident Walter Riddell of Glen Riddell, Scotland (Dumfriesshire). Her mother, Maria Banks Woodley (1772-1808), was daughter of William Woodley, Captain-General of the Leeward islands in the 1790s. Maria was Riddell's second wife, with whom he had two daughters of whom only Anna survived to marry. Maria was herself a poet and by 1793 became the muse of Robert Burns, though this ended in an inadequately explained rupture only reconciled just before his death in 1796. On the death of Ridell in 1802, leaving her in poor circumstances, Maria obtained grace-and-favour residence at Hampton Court, where Anna Maria lived with her. If Charles Walker's mother also lived there in her own right, this may be how they met: if not, the quarters in which his mother died may have been Anna Maria's, inherited from hers. At any rate, after their marriage four children were born there and baptized at either St Mary's, Hampton, or Kingston, with duplicate entries in both registers in some cases: George James (later a cavalry officer, b. 25 November 1812) ; Henrietta Gertrude (later Contessa Baldelli, b. 4 August 1814); Frederica Louisa (b. 8 November 1815) and Charles Montagu (b. 9 October 1817). They then moved to the Villa de Brock, near Florence, where Arthur de Noé Walker was born on 27 October 1820, Henry Riddell on 18 March 1823, Harriet Horatia on 10 June 1826 and Florence Fletcher in 1828. Baptismal certificates (including birth dates) for the first three were inserted in the register of St Mary's, Hampton, presumably by their grandmother: these baptisms, and probably Florence’s, were undertaken at the villa by chaplains to the British mission in Florence. (A discrepancy not yet clarified is that Walker's entry in Marshall's 'Naval Biography', vol. 5 [1831] pp. 225-26, credits him with eight sons and one daughter, but registry evidence does not support it.) The reason the Walkers moved to Florence may have included health but was probably economic, as a good place for well-bred people of limited means to live. He died there on 9 July 1833, aged 52. His wife followed on 21 February 1859 and was buried with him in the English cemetery. Her inscription is damaged but she was 67, so probably born in 1791.

Their son Arthur (1820-1900) became a captain and interpreter in the 6th Madras Native Infantry, an East India Company regiment. After being wounded in China in 1842 he returned to Britain and trained as a doctor at St Andrews. From 1854 he served as a surgeon in the Crimean War and later became a noted early homeopath. He was also a close friend of the writer Walter Savage Landor, as was his strongly Evangelical sister Gertrude (who married Count Antonio Baldelli in Florence) and both had a wide and notable literary acquaintance. Harriet (1826-1907) married Captain Fleetwood Thomas Hugh Wilson in 1849, and thereafter they too lived in Florence for financial reasons. Florence, who married Captain Edward Whyte of the 71st Highlanders, died in Florence in 1877, aged 59, and was also buried in the English cemetery.