Previously attributed to Burne-Jones (See Whitworth Art Gallery entry below), the gothic formality is characteristic of the early figure drawings of William Morris. The cuffs are similar to those that appear in the painting La Belle Iseult of 1858 (Tate Gallery Collections). Holliday bequeathed a set of drawings by William Morris to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1927.
This drawing probably relates to one of the seven stained glass panels commissioned in 1865 by the watercolourist Myles Birket Foster for his newly-built house 'The Hill' at Witley in Surrey. The panels were taken from Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and the cartoons for them are now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; the Whitworth drawing is similar in many ways to the figure of Alcestis in the Amor and Alcestis cartoon at Birmingham.