It is tempting to see the drawing as a self-portrait, done at the same time as the famous self-portrait drawn in profile, now in the Tate Gallery (see I. Fleming-Williams, Constable and his Drawings, 1990, fig. 65): there is the same rather pronounced nose, the same lock of hair over the right temple, the same sideboards, and the same cravatte, as well as the same technique. There is also a reasonably close similarity to the full face portrait of Constable painted in oils by Henry Howard in 1797 (repr. I. Fleming-Williams, op. cit, fig 39. However, Ian Fleming-Williams, while accepting that this newly discovered drawing is by Constable and of about 1806, thinks that the young man in this drawings is too young to be John Constable, who would have been thirty years old. Instead he suggests that the sitter in the artist's brother Abram (1783-1862); this is supported by Jonathan Franklin (for an oil painting of Abram by his borther see L. Paris, I. Fleming-Williams and C. Shields, Constable, Paintings, Watercolours & Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, February-April 1976, p. 33 no V). Alternatively Ian Fleming-Williams suggests that for a number of circumstantial reasons, including the provenance of the drawing, it could depict Robert Knipe Cobbolds (1792-1859), the eldest son of Constable's friend John Cobbold by his second wife; Constable visited the Cobbolds at Ipswich in June 1806 when he is know to have sketched two of the Cobbold (see L. Parris and I. Fleming-Williams, Constable, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, June-September 1991, p. 21)