First Fleet artwork collection

Portrait of an Aboriginal man holding a wooden sword, framed in tondo with a black ink border and measuring 14.2 cm. in diameter. The man's torso is facing forwards and his head is turned in profile to the left. His septum is pierced by a straight bone or stick, and his jaw-length hair is decorated with tooth and bone ornaments. His skin is brown and decorated with white and red-ochre body paint, which runs in a mottled band up his arms, across his shoulders and down to the centre of his chest. There is also a white stripe outlined in red-ochre which runs up the side of his face and across his forehead. To his right rises a crescent-shaped sword striped pale red-brown and black and overlaid with a diamond lattice pattern. The drawing is annotated in brown ink.