A watercolour and tempera on paper by Roberto Fontana, the Milanese painter born in 1844. Fontana's work sits at the intersection of academic figuration and the looser, more atmospheric handling that characterised the best Italian painters of his generation.

The subject is a standing male figure seen in three-quarter profile. A young man in loose costume, head bowed. The treatment is rapid and assured: the white of the shirt rendered in broad, confident strokes against a warm grey ground. It reads as a preparatory study but carries the finish of a resolved work.

The gilded frame, deeply carved with foliate detailing is period and well-suited to the scale of the work. To the reverse, an antiquarian label.