James Russell Lowell is portrayed in an oval vignette bust cabinet card by Warren's studio, Boston, showing the poet, critic, and diplomat in middle age with a full reddish-brown beard spreading loosely across his chest, his hair curling and slightly disheveled, and his gaze directed upward and to his right with an expression of animated intelligence. He wears a dark coat and waistcoat over a white shirt, a striped or patterned cravat loosely knotted at the throat, and a small round pendant or medal visible at the cravat. The oval vignette composition is set against a plain graduated ground, the soft edges of the image giving the portrait a painterly quality consistent with Warren's cabinet card presentation.

Warren's studio at 465 Washington Street, Boston, was among the leading portrait establishments serving New England's literary and intellectual community, and this sitting captures Lowell in the energetic middle years of his career before the silver had entered his beard. The reverse bears the Warren's Portraits imprint in the characteristic brown ink script alongside a detailed penciled identification.

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) was one of the central figures of the New England literary establishment: poet, satirist, critic, editor, and diplomat. He was a founding editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a professor of modern languages at Harvard for two decades, and U.S. Minister to Spain and subsequently to Great Britain. His verse satire The Biglow Papers, written in Yankee dialect, was among the most effective abolitionist literature of the 1840s, and his critical essays collected in Among My Books established him as the leading American literary critic of his generation.

The reverse bears penciled inscriptions reading J.R. Lowell and James Russell Lowell (Poet) (1819–1891) / Abolitionist, the Warren's Portraits imprint at 465 Washington Street, Boston, and dealer code 11/26/13 / LOABCZ.