Portrait, half-length, turned slightly to left and looking to front, with right hand touching her left arm; the sitter is wearing a pearl necklace and earrings. Features boldly and freely hatched in brown and sanguine, with some blue shadow and touches of opaque white heightening, on a pale carnation ground; hair in brown wash, hatched with darker colour and with the lights in gouache; dress in brown wash, hatched and with the lights in gouache; background an opaque brown wash, with a sky in opaque washes of blue and grey; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame: Nineteenth-century oval gilt-brass frame; the flat glass fitted into a rebate; the inner margin is a row of cast and chased leaves within a shallow depression rising to a narrow reeded band and a broad convex band of acanthus leaves alternating with stemmed trefoils; the outer border is a rope moulding; the whole is inserted into a plain brass strip-ring to which the hanger is attached. The main inner part of the assemblage was probably intended originally to be fitted into a velvet covered surround.