A study for the head and hand of one of the girls asleep at the well in The Garden Court, the third in the celebrated Briar Rose paintings at Buscot Park, near Lechlade, in Oxfordshire (see Martin Harrison and Bill Waters, Burne-Jones, 1973, pl.43b, image reversed). The design was conceived about 1874 (a magnificent early composition drawing was sold in these Rooms on 11 June 1993, lot 93), and the series as a whole was completed in 1890, when it was exhibited to great acclaim at Agnew's gallery in Bond Street, bought by the financier Alexander Henderson, and installed in the saloon at Buscot. The present drawing can be dated on grounds of style and technique to the late 1880s.