John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, 1718-92, First Lord of Admiralty by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783. Copyright: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, LondonThe War of American Independence (1775–83) provided excellent opportunities for marine artists and portrait painters to record its sea engagements and those who, in various ways, participated in them.

During the 1770s and 1780s, Dominic Serres was at the height of his career and, throughout the war, he exhibited pictures of it at the Royal Academy. But a new generation of marine artists, who would paint the actions of the French wars of 1793–1815, was also emerging at this time. Nicholas Pocock, a merchant sea captain recently turned to painting, exhibited his first pictures at the Academy in the early 1780s, as did Robert Dodd and Thomas Whitcombe.

Gainsborough’s portrait of the Earl of Sandwich was exhibited there in 1783, the year after he ceased to be First Lord of the Admiralty. Sandwich's support of Captain Cook and his Pacific voyages is reflected in the remarkable landscapes from Cook's second voyage (1772–75), painted by William Hodges who accompanied him.