Paret y Alcázar portrays himself in the classical manner of a melancholy man, sitting on an armchair with one elbow resting on a map of the world that lies alongside some books and an inkwell on a table covered with a green cloth. The expressiveness of the scene is heightened by the painting of a shipwreck in a storm that rests on an easel behind him.

On the floor in the foreground is the artist's palette, along with some books and some open folders filled with papers. At the left of the composition, two classical busts and a hat cover a wooden drawer.

Notable here is the technical quality with which the artist's clothes are rendered. He is dressed in the popular style of a Madrilenian majo.