The most naturalistic and the most narratively complete of all the animal works — a large horizontal watercolor in which a young elephant occupies the right half of the composition, its enormous body described with Sidney's most accomplished animal rendering. The elephant is seen from slightly above and to the side, its trunk raised toward a tree branch where a small orange bird perches, the two creatures in a moment of encounter or mutual awareness.
The elephant's skin is rendered with multi-hue color — gray-blue as the base, overlaid with pink, orange, and green in the same Fauvist vocabulary Sidney used for human portraiture. The result is an elephant that is simultaneously observed and transformed, its biological reality honored and its color reality reimagined. The green eye, rendered with particular care, looks out with genuine animal intelligence.
The jungle setting — the left half of the composition — is handled with the most energetic tree-painting marks Sidney made: overlapping ovals and dots of dark green and teal, the tree canopy rendered with the pointillist vocabulary of The Pointillist Tree (441) applied at full density. Behind the elephant, more trees; above, sky just visible through the canopy. This is a deep forest, a world of contained light.
At upper center, a small orange bird in a tree — barely suggested but clearly specific, its wings distinguishable, its color warm against the surrounding green. At upper right, a pink horizontal form — a resting animal? a branch? — adds another life to the scene.
In the lower ground, small scattered marks suggest undergrowth, insects, the floor of the forest. Sidney painted a complete ecosystem, not just an animal.