The painting, in opaque watercolour on paper, shows a variegated purple and white iris on a central stem off which grow two long and two short pointed leaves and a flower bud . Two orange flowers on leafy stems are painted in the two lower corners on a vastly smaller scale. The main iris flower has petals with a white ground and washes of blue and beige with purple hatched detailing. The stamens of the flower are shown in yellow, and the stalks and leaves are painted in a pale green colour with darker green hatched detailing.
The painting is framed with strips of buff-coloured paper , outlined in black on both sides with a further two ruled black lines on the main ivory-coloured border. The page has strips of blue-grey paper stuck along its margins with two ruled black lines on its inner edges. The left-hand side shows the remnants of a beige-coloured paper strip stuck on top of the blue-grey margin, over which a woven textile strip has been added as a gutter for the present binding of the album.