Technical Notes
The painting's primary support is a twill weave canvas. Each vertical tacking edge is selvaged. The painting is attached to a keyable wooden stretcher that has nonmitered mortise-and-tenon corner joins. It is likely that the stretcher is the painting's original.

The flesh-colored ground is evenly applied, moderately thick, and does not obscure the canvas texture. It appears to be artist applied and completely covers the top and bottom tacking edges but only partially covers the vertical tacking edges.

The background is thinly painted, particularly at the outer edges, and shows active brushwork. The figure was generally painted in a wet-on-dry technique, which is most noticeable in the face and hair, where final brushstrokes and defining details were applied in a dashing manner. They appear crisp and do not blend with the underlying paint.

The fur trim was first defined with large areas of darks and mid-tones, further developed with scumbles for the lighter areas, and finished with crisp, dashing strokes of light and dark paint to define highlights and strengthen shadows. Both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques are evident in the fur collar.

The painting was unlined until 1978, when it was vandalized. The resulting 7.6-centimeter cut at the bottom right of the canvas led to the painting being lined with a wax-resin adhesive to a plain-weave fabric and a Pellon C-10 interleaf.

The paint layer has a moderate amount of age cracks throughout and a minimal amount of drying cracks. The age cracks are most evident on the forehead, around the left side of the mouth, and in the neckcloth, where the paint application is thickest. Drying cracks appear in the black paint and in the shadows on the coat. There are signs of overcleaning, particularly on the sitter's forehead.

Examinations with visible and untraviolet light, as well as treatment records, suggest that the current surface coatings consist of a partially cleaned natural resin varnish and more recently applied synthetic varnish. The surface has a somewhat uneven and matte appearance due primarily to the large areas of natural resin varnish left behind in past cleanings.

Frame Notes
The frame consists of a gilded softwood molding that has a two-piece construction. The bottom pieces have mortised lap-jointed corners, and the top pieces have mitered corner joins. An underlying red bole is visible in the gilded areas. The sight edge consists of a thin cove followed by a narrow flat. There is a large central cove with applied scallop shell ornaments at each corner. The central cove rises to a quarter-round top edge, and the back panel is finished with yellow bole.