Portrait, turned slightly to right and looking to front; the sitter is wearing a neckcloth. Features boldly and freely hatched in brown and sanguine, with some blue shadow and touches of white heightening, over a thick creamy carnation ground; hair in brown wash, hatched with darker colour and heightened with pale gouache; cravat and sleeves in white over grey wash; doublet in hatched brown wash with bronzing and buttons in gold; brown-curtain background, with blue sky and grey clouds; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame
Seventeenth-century gold locket, convex back, straight sides with single broad channel, the bezel turned over the convex glass; the hanger of tear-drop form made with wire of D-section, with a central channel down the middle and bifurcating into flattened tapering spirals of three turns; a scroll-and-leaf engraving on the back beneath the hanger. Scratched on the back: TMW /The Earl of Sandwhich [sic] / by Sam’l Cooper / Nwt Cl’n 734 £to with a label printed D. of Hamilton. and written over in pen [Earl]of Sand[ wich ]; and Salting's printed label 1628 corrected by hand to 4628.