The Royal Marines Museum has a new recruit, enlisted from the art collection of rock star Elton John.

The museum, at Eastney in Portsmouth, paid £55,200 at an auction at Sotheby’s for a portrait of Lt George Dyer RM, something of a star in military circles at the time of the Napoleonic War.

The portrait, painted by leading artist James Northcote in 1780, was expected to fetch between £30,000 and £40,000, but the bidding went considerably higher and the museum trustees were forced to just over £55,000 to secure the picture, although a National Lottery grant accounted for £50,000 of the final total.

Lt Dyer served in the Royal Marines with distinction for almost 40 years, seeing action in HMS Orion at the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 as well as the Napoleonic War and the American War of Independence.

He eventually rose to the position of second-in-command of the Plymouth Division of the Royal Marines in 1815.

Elton John, who was reportedly selling the work as part of the process of redesigning the interior of his home in London, is believed to have raised around £1.4 million in total from the auction.