The man is standing to the front, his face half-left, with feet apart. His greying hair is drawn flat at the sides and caught up in a knot at the back, leaving a roach down the middle of his head. Some facial hair is visible on his chin, cheeks, and upper hp. He wears a large fringed deerskin mantle thrown over his left shoulder and reaching below the knee, leaving the right shoulder bare, with the top edge turned down to reveal the hairy side. A neat seam is visible down the left side. His right hand lies across his body clasping his mantle, his left is extended at the side and points down with the index finger. He is perhaps wearing an ear ornament.
Inscribed in dark brown ink, along the top, "The aged man in his wynter garment. "
John White (c 1540-1593) was an English artist & early pioneer of English efforts to settle North America. He was among those who sailed with Richard Grenville to the shore of present-day North Carolina in 1585, acting as artist & mapmaker to the expedition. During his time at Roanoke Island he made a number of watercolor sketches of the surrounding landscape & the native Algonkin peoples. White had been commissioned to "draw to life" the inhabitants of the New World & their surroundings. During White's time at Roanoke Island, he completed numerous watercolor drawings of the surrounding landscape & native peoples. These works are significant as they are the most informative illustrations of a Native American society of the Eastern seaboard. They represent the sole-surviving visual record of the native inhabitants of America encountered by England's first settlers.
