Support: The support is a 1 x 1 twill-weave, processed linen canvas stretched over an "American Type", double-bevel-faced, miter-cut ended, mortise-and-tenon keyable softwood commercial stretcher bar, pre-cut to the whole inch, 1 ¾" wide x ¾" thick in 30" and 24" sized lengths. The canvas is stretched using blued steel tacks spaced evenly apart. Eight keys are extant.

Ground or Support Preparation: The processed linen canvas has a commercially applied primer consisting of 2PbCO3•Pb(OH)2) and CaCO3 or ZnO in oil. These were identified using XRF spectrometry at 15kV and 40kV, with currents of 28 µA and 3 µA, respectively.

Design Layers: The paints have been applied over charcoal/graphite line under-drawing in single layers, such that the twill texture of the primed canvas is often visible through the paint selectively, particularly across the viewer's right half of the composition. Darker, more translucent values in the central stump figure were prepared with fluid, cream consistencies and allowed to flow and level into the texture of the canvas. As the values become brighter and more opaque in all colors, the paints take on a stiffer, paste-like consistency, which retains application textures and covers the canvas texture. O'Keeffe applies paint at the margins of forms using nearly continuous, curvilinear brush strokes with the brush positioned at an angle low to the canvas, resulting in a continuous, raised ridge of paint at the edge of each form. Surrounding brushwork is generally parallel to the linear directions defined by these edges, with no underlying or subsequent brushwork moving perpendicular to the linear form. Occasionally, adjacent forms do not overlap, and the artist has chosen to allow a "holiday" of unpainted, primed canvas to be a visible detail in the composition, with graphite underdrawing residues sometimes visible. The colors in the painting have been characterized by x-ray spectroscopy at 15kV and 40kV and 28µA and 3µA as containing primarily lead red/orange and cadmium sulfide yellow and/or orange, ZnO, and 2PbCO3•Pb(OH)2, white, and small amounts of Fe red ochre/hematite. The brown paints are Fe umbers. Pb soap micro-protrusion degradation appears clearly accelerated by the presence of basic Pb carbonate in the paints, as they are far more numerous and more fully developed, in the collapsed state, in the regions where lead white has been added.

Surface Coating: Records indicate that butyl methacrylate resin was applied by conservator Caroline Keck in 1948. In 2008, the hydrogenated hydrocarbon resin "Regalrez 1094" was selectively applied to adjust the gloss of scratches and saturate areas of inpainting and repair.

Framing, Backing, and Hanging Hardware: The painting is installed in an original Peter Bayle brass "L" profile metal frame. The fit is very tight. The glazing is Optium® titanium-coated, UV-absorbing, static-free, non-reflective acrylic.

All paints appear secure and stable, despite the presence of hairline, intermittent, limited, and superficial cracking in the paints across the viewer's left and center, as well as at the stretcher bar creases.

Between 1948 and 2001, the painting developed a broad series of buckled cracks, perpendicular to the diagonal twill of the canvas, across nearly the entire viewer's left side. Consolidated cracks appear to remain stable, and planar deformations have not been aggravated since 2015. Most of the cracks in the painting are associated with thicker paint applications (often flattened by palette knife), which could not respond elastically to changing canvas kinetic energy loads as a result of handling, vibration, and shock. The cracks have resulted in moderate to heavy quilting of the canvas verso, isolated chip losses, and severe planar distortion.

The work has almost continuous stretcher bar creases with consolidated cracks across the top, bottom, and right sides, with isolated losses. The work has developed a broad, generalized distribution of 200µm diameter (2PbCO3·Pb(OH)2) micro-protrusions that appear under some magnification as small granular surface inclusions in the paints. They are visible in the primed canvas along the tacking edge where there are no paints. They are more numerous and larger in thick paints containing basic lead carbonate white, becoming very small in areas where the addition of white is minimized or absent.

The work also exhibits an opaque, whitish, aluminum stearate bloom of the darkest saturated reds. The stearate was added as a pigment suspending agent by the paint manufacturers and remains in a mobile, waxy phase, particularly when the work is exposed to hot or cold temperature extremes in transit and on airport tarmacs and customs warehouses. The varnish is lightly discolored with lightly embedded soiling. There are generalized tarnishing and edge abrasions from hand contact with the copper-plated, rolled brass frame.