The design bears some resemblance to the stained glass design of 1863 for Tristram and Isoude's tomb.

This pair of watercolours demonstrates Burne-Jones's continuing interest in Arthurian legend in the late 1850's, following his work with Gabriel Rossetti on the mural decorations of the Oxford Union building which were inspired by Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. The density of composition and the rich colours reveal Burne-Jones's continuing debt to Rossetti (who was himself in 1859 preparing designs for Edward Moxon's illustrated edition of Tennyson's poems, among which are drawings of Arthurian subjects comparable to this work). It is thought that this watercolour is one of a series which was perhaps intended as designs for tiles or panels within a piece of furniture, or as an initial idea for stained glass.

The first of a pair of watercolours illustrating the madness and the tomb of Tristam and Isoude. Burne Jones repeated the subjects in a different form for a series of stained glass panels at Harden Grange, Bingley. Arthur Hughes, Rossetti, Prinsep and Morris all contributed work to the project.

These mysterious and jewel-like watercolours are in the ultra-medieval or 'Froissartian' style, emphasising bright colours and flat heraldic pattern, that Rossetti and his followers explored in the late 1850s. As so often with Burne-Jones, it is not clear if the watercolours should be read as paintings or decorative designs; if the latter, they could be for tiles.

The subjects have not been identified but the imagery of the lower composition looks back to Rossetti's watercolour Arthur's Tomb (1855; British Museum) and anticipates a cartoon representing the tomb of Tristram and Iseult that Burne-Jones made for stained glass in 1862 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery). In our design the effigies seem to lie on a brick tomb surrounded by water.