Portrait, head and shoulders, turned slightly to right and looking to front. Features firmly hatched in brown and sanguine over a thick pale carnation ground; hair in dark brown washes with gouache heightening; collar in white over pale grey-brown wash; sleeves in white shaded with grey; background a blue wash lightened with pale opaque hatching, especially to right; a gold marginal strip; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame: Nineteenth-century copper-gilt locket; the back flat and the straight sides with a half-round central moulding; the bezel turned over the convex glass; the hanger of cast metal set transversely with two side projections and a small button finial; flanked by thin flat wire spirals tapering through six turns. A label on the back of the case inscribed: William [deleted] Thomas May aged 25 by S Cooper in a nineteenth-century hand.