File:Captain John Harvey, 1740-94 RMG BHC3785.tiff

A half-length portrait to right, wearing captain's, over three years, full-dress uniform, 1774-87, in an oval painted frame. He wears his own hair and faces the front to meet the gaze of the viewer. Harvey joined the Navy at the age of 15 and in 1794, at the beginning of the French Revolutionary War, 1793-1802, he was captain of the 'Brunswick', 74 guns. She was part of Lord Howe's fleet in the campaign leading up to the Battle of 1 June 1794, in which she was directly astern of Howe's flagship, 'Queen Charlotte'. Harvey was mortally wounded in the action and died shortly afterwards.

Stuart was an American painter who was also active in England and Ireland. He was in London from 1775 until 1787, where early in 1775 he entered the studio of Benjamin West, 1738-1820, for whom he painted drapery and finished portraits. Stuart exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in the spring of 1787. He maintained an expensive London establishment and had considerable success as a fashionable portrait painter to both English and American sitters who found themselves in London. However, in 1787 Stuart fled to Dublin-almost certainly to escape his creditors-where he remained for five years. In the spring of 1793, he returned to America, leaving behind scores of unfinished canvases. He subsequently lived and worked in New York, and then Philadelphia, where George Washington posed for him during 1795. He moved to Boston in 1805 where he remained for the rest of his life, both painting and advising fellow artists. This painting may be posthumous.