Rectangular miniature in watercolour on ivory, with a gilt rectangular mount and enclosed in a red leather hinged case, the lid lined with red velvet. The sitter is shown bust-length seated on a red chair of which only part is visible, turned to his left but looking out to the viewer against a neutral grey stippled background. He has short reddish hair and (probably) blue eyes allowing for some fading, and is fashionably dressed with a very high shirt collar and a roll collar on his frock coat.

In 1819 Philip Ward had recently become curate of Burnham Westgate, Norfolk, when he met Horatia Nelson, the illegitimate daughter of Nelson and Lady Hamilton. She had lived there since 1817 with her widowed uncle Thomas Bolton (husband of Nelson's sister Susannah) and three of his daughters, and had recently ended an engagement to Ward's predecessor. A relationship developed and they married at Burnham Westgate in February 1822. Ward subsequently became vicar of Tenterden, Kent, and they had ten children, of whom only six reached adulthood. Though he also later adopted the family name 'Nelson-Ward' he only did so informally: not all his descendants used it, his eldest son, the Revd Horatio Nelson-Ward, only legally adopted it by deed-poll from 1881.

This portrait was done for Ward, or possibly for Horatia, since it comes from the Nelson-Ward collection. While it certainly shows him at about the time of their marriage, it is not clear why its received date is so specifically 1822. The received artist attribution is to 'Sir Charles Ross' - which can also only mean Sir William Charles Ross (1794-1860). If this is the case it is a relatively early example by Ross, who initially worked as a miniaturist with Andrew Robertson in London from 1814, but by the mid-1820s was developing a rather more elevated clientele than obscure curates.