A pencil portrait of quiet elegance — a woman seen in profile, her head lifted and turned slightly upward, her expression one of alertness or anticipation. At the neck, a necklace is described with particular care: three or four oval beads, individually drawn with light and shadow suggesting their roundness, the chain connecting them visible. This necklace is the most specific piece of jewelry in any portrait drawing — drawn with the attention of a jeweler.
Sidney was a jeweler. Throughout his life he made jewelry — rings, necklaces, earrings — and the precision with which he drew this necklace reflects the same attention he brought to his jewelry-making practice. The oval beads at the neck of this portrait are drawn the way a craftsman would draw them: understanding their three-dimensionality, their weight, their surface.
The hair, cut short and smoothly drawn, provides the portrait's upper boundary without competing with the face. The ear is the most anatomically complete in any portrait: each fold of the cartilage individually described, the earlobe's weight visible.
Signed with the small "Sid" at lower center — the abbreviated informal signature. The face turned upward and forward, the necklace at the throat, the overall quality of a person caught in a specific outdoor or well-lit moment: this is one of the most immediately present portraits in the collection.