The present drawing is a study of the draperies worn by the left-hand chorister seen standing on the balcony in Edward Burne-Jones's painting King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884, Tate Gallery, London). The inclusion of the choristers adds a ”˜musical’ element, so important to the aesthetic movement. The subject of the painting derives from the Elizabethan ballad, which Tennyson used as a basis for his own poem, The Beggarmaid. William Holman Hunt illustrated the latter in the famous ”˜Moxon’ edition of Tennyson’s poems (1857), and this probably introduced Burne-Jones to the subject, which he first painted in 1860 (Tate Gallery, London.) Burne-Jones began his major painting on the subject in 1880 and this was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884 (number 69). It was enthusiastically received and bought by subscription for the Tate Gallery in 1900. As the boy is wearing a different type of shirt in the painting this suggests that the present drawing was made at an early stage of work towards it.