This drawing is a study for one of the so-called ‘hill-fairies’, one group of which is male and the other female, which Burne-Jones considered painting into the lateral sections of The Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon (Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico).  Described as the artist’s largest and most important picture, it was designed in 1881 to hang in the library at Naworth Castle, Cumberland, the home of Burne-Jones’s patron and friend, George Howard.  Burne-Jones worked on it throughout the 1880s and 1890s but it remained unfinished at his death.  A large composition study for the painting is in the National Museum of Wales.