Head-and-shoulders bronze bust, the sitter facing forward wearing rear-admiral's full-dress uniform with epaulettes, high sword-and-oakleaf collar, an order round his neck and the tops of his medal ribbons visible on the left breast. The shoulders are cut off high on the chest, not even the full epaulette tassels and medals being included, and the whole sits on the roughly oval base formed by the lower edges of the casting. The sitter's short hair is combed and parted on his left above a high forehead, with heavy aquiline brows, the left slightly cocked upward. His name 'Vian' is cast in large capitals into the right breast. The head and face are highly finished, the uniform left with rougher moulding marks in contrast.
The bust was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee when the sitter was a rear-admiral; it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1943 and transferred on permanent loan from the Imperial War Museum in November 1947.
Vian was present in a destroyer at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and was made lieutenant later that year. He spent most of World War I and the inter-war years in small ships however, eventually commanding the cruiser 'Arethusa' just before the outbreak of World War II. In this he was soon given command of the powerful new fourth destroyer flotilla, his own ship being the 'Cossack'. In a famous incident early in 1940, on the Norwegian coast, she seized the 'Graf Spee's' supply ship 'Altmark', releasing 300 prisoners and went on to fight in the Norwegian campaign. His ships were also involved in the 'Bismarck' chase of 1941 before he rose that year to rear-admiral and went to the Mediterranean. There he was heavily involved in the supply of Malta (his flagship 'Naiad' being sunk beneath him) and, after recovering from malaria, in the invasion of Italy. He was subsequently one of the two senior operational naval commanders (the other being American) for the D-Day invasion and then led British naval forces against the Japanese in the Pacific.
In 1946-48 he was Fifth Sea Lord, in charge of naval aviation (of which he had great practical wartime experience, though originally a gunnery specialist) and his last posting was as C-in-C Home fleet, with his flag in Britain's last battleship, 'Vangard'.
On retirement in 1952 he was specially promoted from Admiral (1948) to Admiral of the Fleet, a rank usually only granted to First Sea Lords. In his case it was in recognition of a wartime career spent almost entirely as an exceptional fighting and sea-going officer, for both longer and over a wider geographical range than any contemporary.
Wheeler (1892-1974) developed a reputation as a 'traditional modernist' sculptor in the inter-war years and was elected RA in 1940. Both during and after the war he did a number of naval portraits and memorials, including Jellicoe's bust for Trafalgar Square. He was President of the Royal Academy for ten years from 1956.