A bust-length portrait of a woman leaning forward over a table — the head tilted downward, the eyes cast to the lower left, the face in three-quarter view with the gaze angled away. The posture is one of deep absorption or fatigue: both arms are extended forward onto a surface below the composition's main register, the rounded curves of the forearms visible at the lower edge.
The face is drawn with the ink's full commitment — the lashes emphatic, the brow marked, the shadows at the cheekbone and nose built up with diagonal hatching. The jaw and chin carry shadow too, the whole face having a tonal depth that many of the sparer profiles in the sketchbook sequence do not. This is a face that is being described, not just outlined.
The hair falls freely on both sides, loose and shoulder-length, described with the ink's characteristic flowing strokes. The collar of a garment is briefly indicated at the throat. The forearms at the lower edge — rounded, bare — are drawn with the same interest Sidney brings to all extremities, even when they are only incidentally present.
The table as a compositional element appears rarely in the sketchbook portraits; most are floating heads or half-busts in open space. Here the table anchors the figure and defines its posture — a specific human situation, a person at a surface, absorbed in something below the frame. It is one of the most domestic and situationally specific of the ink portraits.