A large pencil portrait with the most elaborately styled hair in the collection — a woman wearing a bouffant hairstyle, the volume of the hair mass creating an architectural form above the face. The bouffant rises from the crown in a large rounded form, the hair teased and set to hold its shape, then rolls inward and downward at the sides in controlled curls. This hairstyle dates the portrait clearly to the early 1960s or mid-1960s — it is among the most historically specific of the portraits.
The hair is described with the sustained attention its complexity demands: the overall mass established in broad strokes, the individual waves and rolls described in finer marks, the volume apparent through the way the strokes describe form rather than surface. This is volumetric hair drawing — Sidney understanding the hair as a three-dimensional structure rather than a surface texture.
The face below is drawn with characteristic economy: the heavily lashed eyes looking forward directly, the nose and lips in minimal marks, the neck and collar below. At the neckline, a thin chain with a small pendant — drawn with the precision of a jeweler, the pendant's small teardrop form clearly indicated.
The directness of the gaze — both eyes looking forward with self-possession — gives this portrait a quality of presence that the more averted or downcast portraits don't have.