Head-and-shoulders bust on a round socle. Nelson is shown with his head turned half to his left,looking slightly up, his hair thin and in natural disorder brushed forward over a high forehead.

He wears rear-admiral's full-dress uniform, with the right sleeve pinned across the chest and the stars of the Bath, St Ferdinand and the Crescent, and two Naval gold medals round the neck. Below the stars is another medal probably intended to represent that issued privately for the Nile by Nelson's agent, Alexander Davison.

The origin of this bust and the identity of its maker have yet to be fully identified: it was presumably made between the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and Nelson' promotion to vice-admiral in January 1801 (though he had been a rear-admiral since early 1797). For reasons unclear, it is not apparently included in Richard Walker's 'The Nelson Portraits' (1998) which also provides no suggestion of who the artist might be, orwhich other bust might have been a source if not from life.