File:Flagmen of Lowestoft- Admiral Sir George Ayscue, c. 1615-72 RMG BHC2522.tiff

A three-quarter-length portrait to left showing Ayscue wearing a brown silk coat, red sash and holding a baton in his right hand. The background consists of trees and rocks on the right, with ships in the distance on the left.

Ayscue fought for Parliament during the Civil War and against the Dutch in 1652. He then went into Swedish service but returned to England after the Restoration of Charles II. At Lowestoft in 1665, he was Rear-Admiral of the Blue, commanding in the rear division. In 1666 he surrendered the 'Royal Prince', 92 guns, to the Dutch when she ran aground on the Galloper shoal at the Four Days' Fight and he was thus the only English flag officer ever to be captured in the Dutch wars, or subsequently. The painting is inscribed 'Sir George Ayscue'. It is one of the 'flagmen' portraits commissioned by the Duke of York after the Battle of Lowestoft, the first major action of the Second Dutch War, in which the Duke commanded the fleet. It was among those noted by Pepys as being begun or finished when he saw them in Lely's studio on 18 April 1666.

Lely, a Dutchman who arrived in England in 1641 after the death of Van Dyck, soon became his successor as leading portraitist of the day. He worked for Charles I, continued to flourish under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and after the Restoration of 1660 was appointed Principal Painter to Charles II. The full 'flagmen' set consists of thirteen individual portraits, of which George IV presented eleven plus a copy of that of Admiral Sir John Lawson (BHC2833) to Greenwich Hospital in 1824. The originals of Lawson and of Prince Rupert were retained in the Royal Collection, although William IV presented an extended full-length copy of the latter (BHC2990) to the Hospital in 1835.