File:Admiral Sir Richard Hawkins, 1560–1622 RMG BHC4185.tiff

Oil painting of Sir Richard Hawkins, half-length turned slightly to the left but facing the viewer, wearing parade armour and with his bare right hand visible resting on a plumed helmet that he may be holding at waist height in front of him with his unseen left hand. An 'impresa' of a rock and reeds amid waves, with a Latin motto, fills the top right corner of the otherwise dark background.

Son of the more celebrated Sir John Hawkins, Drake's kinsman, Richard sailed with Drake's West Indian expedition of 1585–86, commanded the 'Swallow' in the Armada campaign of 1588 and the 'Crane' in his father's Azores expedition of 1590. He then sailed in the ‘Dainty’ as commander of a South American expedition against the Spaniards in 1593. The following year he was captured, badly wounded, at San Mateo Bay on the Pacific coast of Peru after plundering Valparaiso, and was imprisoned at Lima to 1597 and in Spain until 1602. He was knighted in 1603 on his return and in 1604 became MP for Plymouth and Vice-Admiral of Devon. He was also vice-admiral in Sir Robert Maunsell's expedition against Algiers in 1620–21 and published an important account of his early career and exploits in the Pacific in 1622, the year he died suddenly during a council meeting.

The Latin motto and emblematic design on this portrait are appropriate to his powers of endurance: UNDIS. ARUNDO VIRES. REPARAT. / COEDENS. Q. FOUETUR / FUNDITUS. AT. RUPES. E / SCOPULOSA. RUIT [The reed recovers strength amid the waves and by yielding grows strong, but the rugged cliff perishes utterly]. The design is, however, a second thought, since X-rays reveal a simpler scene beneath it of tents appropriate to a tournament, and, the expensive parade armour that he is wearing. It is therefore possible that the portrait originally commemorated his participation in one of the annual lists that took place under Elizabeth I, or at least his military life before 1593, and that the visible design was overpainted after his release from captivity in 1602.