Philip Burne-Jones, the only surviving son of the artist and his wife Georgiana, was born on 2 October 1861 and entered Marlborough college, the school of his father's lifelong friend William Morris, in 1874. He later became a painter, specialising in small-scale portraits. His father, his uncle Edward Poynter, his cousin Rudyard Kipline, and Henry James, were among his sitters. For a character study, see Angela Thirkell, Three Houses, 1931, pp. 66-8.

In this drawing he is clearly older than in the comparable pencil study made on 12 January 1878, when he was seventeen, which is reproduced in Lady Burne-Jones's Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 1904, II, facing p. 90. His appearance is nearer t othat in the unfinished painting of the artist's family gegun in Ocotber 1879 (ibid, facing p. 106), or even to the likeness of him painting in the background of Burne-Jones's well-known portrait of Georgiana begun in 1883 (repr. Burne-Jones, Arts Council exh., 1975-6, cat. p. 77)