A half-length portrait slightly to the right, showing Anderson seated against a background of bookshelves. He wears a tweed jacket, grey flannel trousers, a fawn pullover, white shirt and an Old Wykehamist tie with a pen in the breast pocket of his jacket. The painting is signed and dated: ‘B. Hailstone ’62’. The portrait was commissioned by the Society for Nautical Research as a retirement gift; the sitter presented it to the Museum in 1962.
Dr Roger Charles Anderson was a noted naval historian and a founding trustee of the National Maritime Museum, becoming its second chairman, 1959–62, following the retirement of Lord Stanhope. He made a number of significant gifts to the Museum library. Anderson was president of the Society for Nautical Research between 1951 and 1960 and was, for a number of years, honorary editor of ‘The Mariner’s Mirror’.