In the War of the Spanish Succession, Shovell brought home the silver captured by Sir George Rooke at Vigo in 1702. Returning home from an attack on Toulon in 1707, in his flagship ‘Association’, he was lost with over 1300 men when his ship and two others were wrecked off the Isles of Scilly.

The Swedish painter Michael Dahl travelled to London in 1682 where he became acquainted with Godfrey Kneller. In 1685, he left for Europe and then returned to London in 1689 where he remained. During Dahl's absence, Kneller consolidated his supremacy as the fashionable portrait painter, although the prolific Dahl was his closest competitor. Politically, Kneller supported the ascendant Whigs, while Dahl was a Tory. The death of Kneller in 1723 left Dahl the principal London portraitist.

Shovell is depicted wearing a blue coat and waistcoat with gold buttons and gold embroidered buttonholes, and a fair full-bottomed wig. He has an unusual steel and bone-hilted hanger and is holding a telescope in his right hand. In the left background is a ship with his flag as an Admiral of the White.