On the left, a boy in a white slashed doublet and ruff is seated at a table. He holds a hat in his right hand and is shown in profile gesturing as if speaking to the middle-aged man in the centre of the composition, who turns to look at the boy while holding papers on the table with both hands. Also on the table are books, an hour-glass, writing materials, an opened letter and a peach.

The subject is unclear; the boy may be receiving a lesson from his tutor, but the objects on the table are not directly related to teaching and the boy seems particularly animated. It may be that this is a portrait of father and son, the former represented interrupted at his work.

A drawing of the head of the man, from a slightly different angle but presumably made for this portrait, is in the Ashmolean Museum.

The painting appears in Pyne's illustrated Royal Residences of 1819, hanging in the King's State Bedchamber at Windsor Castle (RCIN 922108).