Captain The Honourable Augustus Keppel, 1725-86 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1752-53. Repro ID: BHC2823. ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird CollectionReynolds and Serres were founder members of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. Reynolds, a portrait painter, was elected its first president, while Serres, the only marine painter to be a member in 1768, became the Academy’s Librarian.

Reynolds' lifelong naval friend Augustus (later Viscount) Keppel helped shape his career. They met in 1749 through Lord Edgcumbe, an early patron of Reynolds who knew of his ambition to see Italy. When Keppel left for the Mediterranean, in command of the Centurion, Reynolds jumped at the chance to sail with him. The influence of his stay in Italy is seen in his great full-length portrait of Keppel, which launched Reynolds' London fame in the early 1750s.

The Piazza at Havana by Dominic Serres, the Elder, circa 1762. Repro ID: BHC0418. ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the National Maritime Museum, 1983.In 1762, late in the Seven Years War, Keppel's brother General George Keppel, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, was sent to capture Havana from the Spanish. Augustus went as second-in-command of the naval squadron. The campaign provided the subject of a series of paintings commissioned from Serres by the Keppel family.