Study of a woman on her death-bed

This drawing was made in November 1882, as Lady Burne-Jones recorded in her biography of her husband. 'Near the end of the year a most trying demand was suddenly made on him; for a dear friend of ours lost an aged mother, and on the impulse of the time wrote to ask Edward to make a drawing of her face in death. It was done, of course, but with much pain, for he had a strong physical horror of death: the body when the soul was gone he reckoned nothing, and always said that if I died before him he would never look at the "mockery of that waxen image". A stronger feeling with him, however, was the impossibility of finding words to refuse the request of a friend.
The identity of the 'dear friend' is not known, and no-one with the forename of John immediately suggests himself. Burne-Jones's horror of the task may not be unconnected with the fact that he had lost his own mother within a few says of his birth.