This is a reduced watercolour version of the large painting with the same title of 1879, now in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Merseyside. Arthur Tooth & Sons published an etching by Félix Jasiński after the painting in 1897. There is a cartoon for the painting in Norwich Castle museum (1932.89). Douglas Schoenherr (correspondence in dossier, 4/4/09) believes it was made in 1876 when Burne Jones was first working on the subject, as part of his process before working on the larger cartoon and making various studies for the angel in 1878 and 1879 (in the Fitzwilliam and elsewhere) including a large full-length drawing of the angel, in gouache on blue-prepared paper (recently purchased by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) Gere 1994 A small version of the painting, signed and dated 1879, in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight (Burne Jones Exh., Arts Council 1975, no. 136). Many of Burne Jones's later pictures - for example 'The Golden Stairs' (1876-80), 'King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid' (1875-84), 'The Depths of the Sea' (1886), and 'Danae and the Brazen Tower' (1887-8) have the same narrow, upright format, which John Christian suggests may have been a consequence of the artist's practice of designing stained glass.
The Wyndham's were great friends of Burne-Jones and it is likely that they bought the painting directly from him.