Technical Notes
The painting’s primary support is a plain-weave, medium-weight canvas. The thread count averages seventeen threads per centimeter in both directions. The canvas shows pronounced cusping along all four edges. A glue-adhered lining fabric applied in 1925 was removed in 1963 and replaced with a new fabric lining that was adhered with wax-resin adhesive. There is an inverted L-shaped tear in the area of the sitter’s coat.

The grayish-white ground was applied evenly in a moderately thick layer that does not hide the texture of the canvas. The gray ground is visible in some of the shadow areas of the face. Badger painted the portrait in broad, flat areas of local color, with simple modeling of forms, using blacks, browns, and grays in shadow areas. The forms have crisp edges, and there are some areas of low impasto found in the highlights. Dark-brown paint used to describe the shadows in between the fingers and to delineate the fingernails was applied wet-on-dry after the general shape of the hand had been painted.

The artist used a lighter yellow-brown paint for the background to the right of the sitter’s head, the brushstrokes of which radiate outward from the head and gradually blend with the darker brown background. A final dark-brown layer of background paint does not completely extend to the edges of some of the forms, leaving, in places such as above the sitter’s proper left arm, a thin band of the lighter underlying background color. Badger also painted reflected highlights on the underside of the sitter’s chin.

The quill pen, inkwell, and memorandum book were painted after the column was completed. Pentimento can be seen in the open book where the edge of the table has begun to show through. This is in contrast to Badger’s usual practice of leaving an area of reserve for each element and then painting it in.

Small pinpoint losses of paint and ground layers occur throughout, especially in the lower left. Some overall abrasions in the paint surface, including in the face, may be the result of past cleaning attempts. Stains and flyspecks on the paint surface are particularly obvious on the lighter white and yellow areas.

The painting has a moderately thick coating of natural resin varnish that has yellowed. On top of this is a coating of isobutyl methacrylate, applied in 1963. The surface of the work appears somewhat dull.

Frame Notes
The frame consists of a gilded, single-piece molding made of radially cut softwood. It features three decorative bands: a narrow inner band of shallow chip carving, a middle band of pebbled finish, and an outer band with a carved scroll-and-vine motif. A thin band of shallow carving on the back panel echoes the motif of the inner edge.

The frame, like that on its pendant, closely resembles those on Badger’s Captain-Lieutenant John Larrabee, John Singleton Copley’s John Bours, and Joseph Blackburn’s Hannah Babcock (Mrs. John Bours).