This is a study for the female figure in The Lament, a bodycolour drawing of 1866, which was exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society in 1869 and is now in the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. The Lament shows a male and female figure seated in an interior with a view of a courtyard beyond; both are lamenting poignantly the transience of youth and love. At the time of this preparatory drawing, Burne-Jones seems to have been thinking in terms of an outdoor setting. The instrument that the figure is holding is of Burne-Jones's own design and was specially constructed as a studio prop; it could not play a note but was of such a picturesque appearance that it appears in a number of Burne-Jones's paintings, notably Laus Veneris, Love among the Ruins and The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon. This kind of subject matter is very characteristic of Burne Jones; in a now lost letter, the artist wrote "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful".