This study relates to the last painting in a series of seven illustrating the legend of St George. The finished oil, Saint George and the Dragon: The return of the Princess (Bristol City Art Gallery) shows Princess Sabra walking hand in hand with St George while female musicians form a procession around them. The paintings were commissioned in 1865 by Myles Birket Foster (1825-1899) to decorate his home at Witley, Surrey. Burne-Jones made a preliminary set of highly finished pencil drawings, six of which are at the British Museum and there are more than sixty preparatory drawings in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery collection.
This drawing by Charles Fairfax Murray is a variant on Burne-Jones's composition of the last picture (The Return) in The St George Series. It was drawn when he was working as an assistant in 1866 and was either made under Burne-Jones's supervision or is his own variation on the subject. The drawing although close to Burne- Jones, has many of the mannerisms of Murray's own drawings: the looseness of line, the staccato leaves and the sketchily drawn background buildings, and the economy applied in describing eh faces.