This is a fine example of Burne-Jones' delicate and sensitive pencil technique of the early 1870s, comparable with his numerous pencil drawings of Maria Zambaco. The intensity of the eyes is particularly striking. The sitter is probably Julia Jackson, Mrs Leslie Stephen. The drawing bears a very strong resemblance to the head of the Virgin in the oil painting The Annunciation (Lady Lever Art Gallery), designed in 1876 and completed in 1879, for which she was the model. She was the niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and her sister the celebrated hostess Mrs Prinsep of Little Holland House who had befriended Burne-Jones. Julia Stephen was the mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Pencil studies of her exist in a sketch book of circa 1874.
In the Hollyer photograph of the drawing that appears in Cosmo Monkhouse's work "Contemporary British Artists" pub. 1899, is undated. The date of 1873 would thus appear to have been added either late in Burne-Jones's lifetime or by his son after his death. It would seem that the date is inaccurate as Burne-Jones began the Annunciation in 1876.