A three-quarter-length portrait to the left in a brown coat edged with gold lace and fastened with gold clasps, with a blue cloak swathed round him. He wears a light brown full-bottomed wig and his left hand points to a letter inscribed 'To the Right Honble. The Earle of Orford at Chipingham', which sits on a table covered with red cloth. A curtain hangs on the left and a column stands in the right background.

Russell commanded the Anglo-Dutch fleet at the victorious Battle of Barfleur, 1692, and was Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, 1694. On the orders of William III, he was the first British commander to over-winter at Cadiz (rather than sailing his squadron home in the autumn) and so inaugurated a policy that led to the acquisition of a Mediterranean base at Gibraltar in 1704 and the maintenance of a year-round British Mediterranean presence.