A head-and-shoulders portrait of a sailor with his arms folded facing right. He wears a seaman's uniform and a naval cap with the anonymous 'HMS' tally band, a wartime precaution to prevent the enemy knowing precise ship movements. On his right arm he wears the radio communicator's badge, since he was a telegraphist. The painting is signed and dated: 'H. Carr 44'.

The sitter, Maurice Alan Easton, a 'hostilities-only' rating who in civilian life was a railway booking clerk from Oxfordshire, was painted in 1944 in the naval barracks at Naples. Easton was selected by Carr when he was working there as an official war artist. An undated (early 1946) clipping from the 'Sunday Dispatch' gives Easton's account of their encounter: 'I was staying at an hotel in Naples, waiting for a draft to Corsica, and one day when I walked into the place I saw a line of matelots being inspected by Captain Carr. It looked to me like an identification parade, so I beat a hasty retreat upstairs. I hadn't got very far, when a voice called out "That's the man I want".' Carr attempted to impart a symbolic significance to the young man, using fluid paint and a heroic stance. He exhibited the work simply as 'The Sailor' in the Navy League's post-war 'Naval Art Exhibition', held at the Suffolk Street Galleries and opened by the First Lord of the Admiralty on 29 January 1946. The image was also used as a poster for the show, which greatly astonished Easton when he was sent back to London at that time and saw his face on the advertising billboards.

The Museum only learnt the identity of the sitter, and the related circumstances, from the above-mentioned press cutting: this was sent to it in 1975 by a correspondent who was an acquaintance of Easton's.