Portrait of a man, head and shoulders, to front and wearing armour and a white collar. Features in long strokes of bright red with a little shading in grey and blue and with black for the eyes with spots of white, on a pale creamy carnation ground; hair in loose sparse hatches of grey over the bare vellum; collar in white wash modelled in grey; armour washed and hatched in black and grey and with white for the lights; the studs in brown and metallic gold; background a solid dark brown to the left, pale brown to the right; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame: Nineteenth-century silver-gilt locket, the convex back roughly soldered to the straight sides, which hold the convex glass by its curved edges in a bezel; the hanger of broad flat wire bent into a trefoil loop and soldered to the top of the locket; engraved on the back in nineteenth-century lettering: Quentin Kennedy / younger son of / Hugh Kennedy of Bennan / born 1599/ married his cousin Madelina / daughter of Andrew Ross of Garstin / was many years / Dep.ty Gov.r of Jamestown Virginia / died 1670/ R. +P.