A bust-length ink portrait of a broad-faced bearded man, bare-chested — no collar, no shirt, the shoulders and upper chest described with brief curving lines before the composition dissolves. The beard is the most elaborately described element: a full growth covering the chin and jaw, rendered with dense hatching strokes and individual mark-making that gives it real texture. The face above the beard is drawn with the familiar sketchbook confidence — strong brow, alert eyes, the nose broadly placed.
The bare chest sets this portrait apart from virtually every other subject in the sketchbook series — a man drawn without the social mediation of clothing, the body beginning where the face ends. In the life drawing sequence, nudity is the expected condition; in the portrait sketchbooks, it is entirely exceptional.
The eyes carry a quality of focused attention — slightly narrowed, looking forward and slightly down, as if in the middle of a thought or a sentence. The expression is neither posed nor relaxed but actively engaged, a face in the middle of something. The full beard and the bare chest together suggest an informal, domestic context — a man at home on a warm day, Sidney with his sketchbook.
The possibility that this is another self-portrait — the face and beard consistent with the self-portraits at 1376 and 1362 — is worth noting for Volney to confirm. The face has the same broad structure, the beard at a similar stage of growth. If confirmed, it would be the seventh self-portrait and the only one showing Sidney without a shirt.