A bold and unusually direct portrait — a woman whose expression carries more psychological weight than almost any other face in the portrait drawings. The eyes, rendered with heavy brow marks and strongly defined upper lids, look downward or inward with an expression that reads as displeasure, concentration, or private distress. The mouth is set. The overall impression is of someone who has decided something, or is containing something that is not easy to contain.
The ink technique here is broader and less linear than many of the portraits — thicker marks, more pressure, the brush moving with more weight. A small decorative pin or brooch at the chest, rendered with a few quick marks, adds the only domestic detail. The hair is swept back and to the sides, described in confident arcs.
The expression is the work's subject more than the person. Sidney looked at this face and chose to record it in this moment — not its most flattering or composed moment, but a moment of private feeling. This is the discipline of honest portraiture: drawing what is actually there rather than what the subject would prefer to show.
A small mark at the upper left — a brief arc — may be the beginning of a line that was abandoned, or simply the paper's edge. The signed "Sidney Cothran" at lower left is in a fluid hand that matches the confidence of the drawing itself.
Among the portraits in this section, this is the most psychologically charged face, the one most clearly caught in a private state.