This fine portrait study is stylistically similar to the artist's well-known portrait of the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941), ca. 1890, in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw (Wood 1907, pl. XLV). Two additional studies made by Burne-Jones for his Holy Grail tapestries, both dating 1893, are also stylistic akin to this sheet (Wood 1907, pls. XXI and XXII). In the McCrindle sheet, Burne-Jones delicately portrays the figure in a three-quarter view, donning a toque-shaped cap reminiscent of the red bereta commonly seen Italian Renaissance portraits. Works cited: T. Martin Wood, Drawings of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (London: George Newnes Ltd; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907). The Morgan
Burne-Jones was continually on the lookout for faces suitable to use as models for his imagined protagonists. This drawing of a man's head, he found suitable upon which to base the features of Perseus. Coupled with the drawings on the reverse of Andromeda in variant positions for The Rock of Doom, the present drawings can be dated to the 1880s, as preliminary sketches exist within Sketchbook (V&A E.9.1955 No 15) showing Andromeda in the pose on the left.