These studies are for the so-called 'hill fairies', one group male, the other female, that Burne-Jones considered painting into the lateral sections of The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon. The date 1885 on one of them corresponds to an entry for that year in his autograph work-record, preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: 'also I worked on Avalon, and made the designs for the Fairies in the hills of that picture'. 1885 was also the year when Burne-Jones suggested to George Howard that he should keep the original version of the picture and paint a 'simpler scheme' for Naworth.
Exhibited: Bradford, Corporation Art Gallery, no. 57.