Study of how light affects thin drapery as worn by naked model. A practice of the Neo-classicists headed by Albert Moore, and including Whistler both of whom Burne-Jones was friendly at the time.
The drawing shows three women singing and playing music: the one on the left leans around her companion, holding a sheet of music so that both can see it; the central one holds a psaltery; the one on the right seems to hold some kind of violin or viol. These are the unseen performers who entertained Psyche as she ate, just after she had arrived in Cupid's palace, according to the story in Apuleius's "Metamorphoses" (V.3 for this incident), although the drawing illustrates William Morris's verse version, "The Story of Cupid and Psyche" (ll. 596-639). Curator Ashmolean Museum Oxford