A half-length full-face portrait within a painted circle. The sitter wears an admiral's undress uniform of 1783 to 1787, of a blue jacket with gold braid and his own white hair. On 1st June 1794, in command of the Channel Fleet, he won the first fleet engagement of the French Revolutionary War, over 400 miles west of Ushant. The French were badly beaten with one ship sunk and six captured but the important grain convoy from America, which they had sailed to protect and the British to attack, slipped through to Brest. It was Lord Howe's last sea service. The artist painted three copies of this portrait so that each of the sitter's daughters could have one. This one is thought to have belonged to the third daughter. The prime version was painted, with a pendant pair of Admiral Samuel Barrington, to flank a panoramic painting of Howe's 'Relief of Gibraltar', 1782, all three originally being part of the presentation of Copley's vast painting of the 'Siege of Gibraltar' now in the Guildhall Art Gallery.