A portrait drawing of George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham, on paper prepared with a pink ground. He is shown bust length, facing to the front. He is informally dressed and wears a cap with a badge and a chain around his neck. The drawing is almost entirely executed in black and coloured chalks. Holbein has concentrated on the sitter's face, which is carefully modelled in black and red chalks to delineate Cobham's high cheek bones and the depth of his eye sockets. The chalk in the hat may have been worked with a damp brush to suggest soft velvet. The drawing is on the same paper as that used by Holbein for his drawing of Charles Wingfield (RCIN 912249), and may be of a similar date.

An eighteenth-century inscription (a copy of a mid-sixteenth-century original) at top left identifies the sitter as 'Brooke Ld Cobham'.

George Brooke succeeded as Baron Cobham in 1529, inheriting his father's extensive lands. He pursued a military career in France and Scotland, and was noted for his bravery on the battlefield. From June 1544 he was Deputy of Calais, serving in that position during Henry VIII's siege of Boulogne and combining his military expertise with courteous diplomacy. He had a great interest in Italy, acting as patron to a number of Italian craftsmen who sought work at the Tudor court and sending his sons to be educated in Padua. His sister was the wife of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who also sat to Holbein in the 1530s (RCIN 912250).