Portrait of the British Admiral Sir Edward Hughes (1717/1720–1794)

In 1782 and 1783 Edward Hughes commanded the British squadron in the East Indies and fought five actions against the French admiral Suffren off the coasts of India and Ceylon. None of them was decisive. Both fleets limped into port, refitted and came out again, and the war ended with the two men roughly where they had started. Hughes went home in 1784 a Knight of the Bath and an extremely rich man, most of the money made from captured ships, and he sat to Reynolds in 1786. Reynolds, then 63 and president of the Royal Academy, produced several portraits of him over the following two years, and this is one of them. He gave the admiral his good naval uniform and very little flattery, and set the head against the smoky, storm-coloured background he favoured in his late military portraits.