Half-length frontal portrait of Ira Aldridge, celebrated nineteenth-century black actor, in the role of Othello. He is dressed in a white wrapper-like garment of which the striped coral-and-white sash is just visible at the bottom of the picture. He has a white lace neckerchief. His eyes look to the left. The plain dark grey background is paler behind his head than it is in the corners of the painting. His close-cropped, parted hair is therefore silhouetted.