Admiral Keppel (1725–1786)

Admiral Keppel, painted around 1773, depicts Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel, whose naval career became a political controversy in 1778 when his superior officer Sir Hugh Palliser court-martialed him after the inconclusive Battle of Ushant. Keppel's acquittal became a cause célèbre for the Whig opposition to Lord North's government, and celebratory riots followed his vindication. Dance painted Keppel before the controversy, when the admiral represented straightforward naval distinction. The later political resonance of the subject gave Dance's earlier portrait retrospective importance as a record of the man before his famous trial transformed him into a Whig political symbol.

The naval portrait presents Keppel in the confident posture of a senior commander, with Dance balancing the formal requirements of military portraiture with a sense of the sitter's individual character and aristocratic bearing.