A major discovery — the most fully realized still life in the collection and one of the most technically accomplished watercolors overall. A long-necked squash or gourd dominates the composition, its brilliant orange-gold body described with multiple layered washes that build the form's volume convincingly — the yellow at the lit top surface, the deeper orange-brown at the shadowed lower zones, the green at the tip and stem. The squash is cut open, its interior exposed: a cavity of pink-rose color rendered with hatching marks, the seeds or flesh described in a brief passage of white highlights.
Around the squash, vessels: at left, a red-handled pitcher or jug in warm crimson described with confident single-pass brush strokes; at right, two smaller containers — a darker vessel with a lid and a lower rectangular form — rendered in the same warm ochre palette as the squash. The background behind all the objects is a swirl of warm brown atmospheric wash, darker at upper center where it creates a foil for the lighter squash.
The overall palette — orange, gold, ochre, crimson, warm brown — is the most unified chromatic statement in any watercolor. Every color is in the warm register, the cool world entirely excluded. This is an autumn table, a harvest arrangement, warm with the season.
Signed "Sid" at lower right — the abbreviated informal signature. The squash's open interior is the most intimate and most technically complex element: Sidney cut something open to see what was inside, then drew what he found.