Burne-Jones made designs of Venus Concordia and Venus Discordia in 1870 as predellas for his huge polyptych The Story of Troy. In the early 1890s he re-visited the two subjects and began to work them up into two independent paintings, These were never finished but numerous drawings remain. The present drawing is a preliminary study for the left hand Grace from a favoured body model of the 1890s, but in the transference to the painting through further compositional studies (Birmingham City art Gallery and Tullie House Museum, Carlisle) he refined the body type to a slimmer more youthful shape. The Three Graces took on an importance beyond their inclusion in the painting, as is evidenced by the versions in Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery and in Tullie House Museum, Carlisle.