A bust-length ink portrait of a woman in three-quarter view with a half-smile — the lips curved slightly at one side, the expression warm but restrained, not a full laugh or grin but the beginning of one. In a collection where genuine smiling faces are rare in portrait work, this half-smile is notable: a face that has let something through.
The ink is applied with the broad, confident strokes of the sketchbook series — the hair described with quick directional marks, the face's outer contour a single clean line, the features placed with efficient economy. The eyes carry the warmth of the expression below; they are slightly narrowed, the lids carrying the squint that accompanies a genuine smile.
The collar and jacket below are drawn with particular specificity: lapels, collar points, and what appears to be a jacket button at the left. The clothing places the sitter in a specific social register — not a life class subject but a person met and drawn in ordinary life.
The half-smile connects this portrait to the collection's rare instances of genuine expression — Work 1200 (The Laughing Woman), the warmth in Work 1323 (She Stands, Unhurried). Sidney was consistently drawn to faces that held something back and to moments when they briefly let it show. The half-smile is the most common of those moments, and this is its clearest instance in the ink portrait sequence.