Technical Notes
The support is a plain-weave canvas with marked cusping along all four edges. On average, twelve threads per centimeter run vertically, and eleven threads per centimeter run horizontally.

Remnants of the original strainer are attached to the painting’s present ICA-constant-tension stretcher. The strainer was made of coniferous wood and had lap-joint corners that were secured by hand-forged nails.

The ground is grayish white and does not extend onto the tacking edge. The application is moderately thick and does not hide the canvas texture. The marked cusping and lack of ground on all the tacking edges suggest that the artist primed the canvas.

Badger painted large areas of the background with opaque dark-brown paint, leaving reserves for the figure and chair. He applied the paint in broad, flat areas and then modeled by blending in lighter opaque colors. Contours are mostly hard edged, and the work appears to have been done in sections. Much of the painting was produced using a wet-on-wet technique—although there appears to be some glazing in the shadows of the clothing—and some details were painted wet-on-dry. The pattern on the dress was largely painted wet-on-dry with lighter opaque brown on the underlying brown paint. Low impasto is evident in the sleeves, cap, and curtain tassel.

Scattered stains and flyspecks appear throughout, most prominently on the lighter areas of paint. There are various abrasions on the paint surface as well as small pinpoint losses throughout. There is a minimal amount of inpainting, confined mostly to the edges. A slight flattening of impasto is probably the result of past lining treatments.

The painting is varnished with what appears to be a coating of natural resin varnish, on top of which is a spray coating of isobutyl methacrylate, applied in 1968.

Frame Notes
The frame consists of a gilded single piece of softwood molding that is radially cut. 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).