The Cossack by Aris Raissis is a profile portrait of a bearded young man facing to the left, set against a pale grey ground. He wears a tall fur hat with a red cloth crown showing at the top, and a heavy coat with a deep fur collar that rises around his neck and shoulders. The light falls from the front onto the cheekbone, brow and bridge of the nose, leaving the jaw, the fur and the dark coat in shadow. Raissis paints the skin in smooth, closely worked oil, then switches to broken, directional strokes for the hat and collar, dragging the brush so that individual hairs of the fur catch the light against the muted background. The subject draws on the dress of the Cossacks, the horsemen and frontier communities of the steppe lands of present-day Ukraine and southern Russia, whose traditional costume includes the tall sheepskin or astrakhan hat - the red-topped form is associated with the Kuban and Don Cossacks - worn with a fur-lined coat against the cold.