Head of a young girl

The drawing is in the 'Florentine' style that characterises Burne-Jones's work in the 1870s, following his last two visits to Italy in 1871 and 1873. Using a hard pencil, he explores the linear possibilities of the image, particularly the hair, which is rendered with the serpentine rhythms he had learnt from Botticelli and his contemporaries.

The drawing seems to be a portrait rather than a study for a picture, but the sitter is unknown. The date is too early for her to be one of the children of the Souls or of his solictor George Lewis, who were to sit to him for drawn or painted portraits later in his career.