Portrait of a man, head and shoulders, turned slightly to left and looking to right; the sitter is wearing a neckcloth and a long wig. Features stippled and hatched in sanguine, blue, green and brown over a pale carnation ground; hair and costume washed and hatched in transparent browns with pale gouache lights; collar in pale grey heightened with white; background in opaque dark brown; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame: Nineteenth-century oval silver-gilt locket, the back convex and the sides with a single deep channel rising-to the bezel, which holds the flat glass by its bevelled edge; the hanger, of D-section, is soldered transversely at the top of the locket and with separate symmetrical spirals of six turns on each side; the inside packed out with old playing cards, apparently to increase the sense of age. Scratched on the back with the inscription James 2nd and other illegible inscriptions.