Oval miniature in watercolour, in a gilded oval surround set in a black wooden rectangular backing and a moulded and gilded outer frame, with decorative ribbon decoration above. An engraved and black-lettered name scroll below is inscribed: 'PRINCE RUPERT. / BY SAMUEL COOPER'. There is also a label on the back of the frame bearing the inscription 'W3 56'. The sitter is shown head and shoulders turned to his left with only the right shoulder visible, but facing out to the viewer. He wears gilt-studded armour, a white-lace neckcloth and probably a undressed long auburn wig of which the colour matches his eyebrows, suggesting natural hair. The eyes are also brown; the down-turned mouth suggests a slightly undershot jaw and the overall impression is of fatigue and a 'face hardened by years of strenuous fighting', as H. A Kennedy put it in his 1917 'Studio' monograph on the miniatures in the Buccleuch collection, from which this comes (p.17).

The date of this item is presumably after the Restoration of 1660, and perhaps most dependent on assessment of the sitter's age, though the armour may suggest about the time of the Second Dutch War (1664-67): Cooper himself died in 1672 and though its authorship has not been questioned it is not one of his most finished miniatures and not signed (which many are). The name scroll is characteristic of miniatures formerly in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch from whom Sir James Caird purchased it in April 1941 as one of a larger group. The frame is unusually elaborate but presumably (?) not the original one, if only from its exceptional condition. The illustration in Kennedy (1917, pl. xxx) only includes the inner gilt oval.