This is a copy by Edward Clifford after Burne-Jones's gouache of 1871 which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Ionides Bequest). Clifford had been one of the artist's assistants, and knowing his master's technique, he was able to make excellent copies of pictures he admired and did not possess. The subject from the Franklin's Tale as it is told by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales. Dorigen is shown at the window of the "Castel Faste by the Sea" gazing anxiously at the "Grizly Rokkes Blacke"; she fears these rocks will prevent her husband's return from England and in despair pledges herself to a young squire if he can remove them. This, with the aid of a magician, the young squire, Aurelius, achieves; but eventually he forgoes his reward.
It is known that Edward Clifford had access to Burne-Jones's studio, but there is no suggestion in the biography or his writings that he was actually an assistant in the Studio, if he was an assistant along side T M Rooke and Charles Fairfax Murray, then it has yet to come to light. He was a member of a group of artists who idolized the work of Burne-Jones, headed by Robert Batemen.