A half-length, full-face portrait showing Cayzer seated in a wooden armchair, wearing a double-breasted suit, white shirt and a blue National Maritime Museum tie; his hands are clasped in his lap and a walking stick rests on his left leg.
(Michael) Anthony Rathborne Cayzer was a shipowner, aviation executive and chairman of the National Maritime Museum from 1977 to 1987, having been a trustee since 1968. Educated at Eton and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, he was set for a career as a professional soldier, being commissioned into the Royal Scots Greys in 1939. While serving in the Middle East, he contracted poliomyelitis and was invalided out of the army in 1944. The disease left him with mobility difficulties for the rest of his life. He then entered the family’s considerable shipping and financial empire. Cayzer’s grandfather, Sir Charles Cayzer, founded the Clan Line and the family was a major player in British shipping. He later qualified as a pilot and became involved in aviation. He was chairman of Servisair (1954–87) and instrumental in the creation by merger of the airline British Caledonian in 1970. Cayzer was keen to establish a national aviation museum to complement the National Maritime Museum.
The artist, Andrew Festing (b. 1941), is a well-known portrait painter and was president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters from 2002 to 2008. Having worked at Sotheby's, he took up full-time painting in 1981.