John Greenleaf Whittier is portrayed in a close bust cabinet card by Sarony, 680 Broadway, New York, presented within a distinctive arched-top vignette that frames the poet's gaunt, deeply lined face against a soft graduated ground. The name Whittier is inscribed in small script on the front mount between the Sarony and 680 Broadway imprints. Whittier appears in advanced old age, his face clean-shaven with prominent brow ridges and dark penetrating eyes, his white hair receding from a broad high forehead with thin curls at the temples, wearing a dark frock coat with a black satin-lapeled waistcoat and a large black bow tie over a white shirt. His expression is solemn and direct, conveying the moral seriousness that defined his public reputation throughout his career.

The arched-top vignette is a compositional format that Sarony used selectively for subjects of particular distinction, and the warm yellow card stock is characteristic of certain Sarony cabinet card issues from the late 1870s and 1880s. The reverse is plain yellow stock with a penciled inscription reading John Greenleaf Whittier.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) was the preeminent Quaker poet of the American nineteenth century and a cornerstone of the antislavery movement, whose verse and editorial work helped shape public sentiment against slavery before the Civil War. His masterwork Snow-Bound (1866), a nostalgic elegy for his New England farm childhood, became one of the most beloved poems in American literature and secured his reputation beyond his political work. Poems including Maud Muller, Barbara Frietchie, and The Barefoot Boy entered the popular American imagination and remained staples of school curricula for generations.

The reverse bears a penciled inscription reading John Greenleaf Whittier on plain yellow card stock and dealer code 1/22/12 / LOABCZ / Eb.