Included in a scrapbook owned by the Seddon family - amongst drawings by Rossetti and Holman Hunt - this was one of several small arched-top drawings by Sir Richard Rivington Holmes, archaeologist to the Abyssinian Expedition (18867-1868), Royal Librarian at Windsor Castle (1870-1905), and Sergeant at Arms to Queen Victoria (1898). 

From the very early days of the Brotherhood, when ideas were being formed amongst friends as to principles and intentions, Pre-Raphaelite pictures were idiosyncratic, sharing themes, models and compositions. It has been suggested that Holmes collaborated with Rossetti and Siddal on his illustrations to Tennyson's 'Home that bought her warrior dead' (1860).

This drawing is associated with Thomas Woolner's poem 'My Beautiful Lady', published in the first issue of The Germ (1850). The poem was illustrated by two Hunt etchings, the second of which is similar to this drawing. Both were inspired by the second part of Woolner's poem - 'Of my Lady in Death':

The grass has grown above that breast,

      Now cold and sadly still,

      My happy face felt thrill:-

Her mouth's mere tones so much expressed!

      Those lips are now closed set, -

      Lips which my own have met;

Her eyelids by the earth are pressed;

      Damp earth weighs on her eyes;

      Damp earth shuts out the skies.

My lady rests her heavy, heavy rest.