Head and shoulders portrait of Professor Derek Denton, AC, FRS, FAA, FRCP, Founding Director of the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, Melbourne, Australia. Professor Denton is shown at a younger age than the actual date of the painting, based upon photographs provided by him and from the artist’s personal knowledge. Denton is shown smiling and angled slightly to the viewer’s left. He wears a suit jacket, white shirt striped with blue and a grey-green tie.

The composition, hanging in its preferred condition (without a conventional frame) continues around the angle of the canvas. The background is clouded, in keeping with many of Dawson's paintings, and appropriate for a work which, although contemporary, aims to capture its subject in an earlier, unspecified time of life.