Head-and-shoulders classical-style marble bust fitting on a separate round socle. This bears a decorated bronze-gilt plaque engraved with an as yet untranslated inscription in Russian.

The sitter is shown fairly late in life, with short hair brushed back and a high forehead, looking slightly to his right. A robe is wrapped loosely round his neck and forwards over his right shoulder, with a loose-hanging hem.

Chichagov was a Russian naval officer and explorer, who was educated in Britain and joined the Russian navy at the age of 16. In 1764, when deputy commandant of the port of Archangel, he was appointed to lead the three-ship expedition organized by the scientist Lomonosov to find the North-East Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans round Siberia. He sailed past Svalbaard and reached 80°26'N in 1765 and 80°30'N in 1766, but both attempts failed to find the route. During the first Russo-Turkish War he defended the Kerch Strait, preventing Turkish warships from reaching the Sea of Azov. Afterwards he was in charge of the ports of Archangel, Reval, and Kronstadt. During the Russo-Swedish War of 1788-90 he was commander-in-chief of the Russian Baltic Fleet, defeating the Swedes at the Battles of Öland (1789), Reval and (against superior odds) Vyborg Bay (both 1790). Overall the Russian capture of 5000 Swedish sailors and 200 officers brought the end of the war. Chichagov was always an anglophile, he married an Englishwoman, and after his retirement in 1797 spent his last years in England.

This bust was presented to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital in 1843 by his son, Admiral Pavel Chichagov (1767-1849), also a distinguished Russian officer who was however dismissed in 1813 when, acting in a military capacity, he was blamed for failure to stop Napoleon's retreating army crossing the Beresina in November 1812. He subsequently became a British citizen but lived mainly in Italy and France, never returning to Russia.