After Dunn started working for him in 1867, Rossetti said: ‘The degree to which he has improved in copying my things is extraordinary, and I now perceive that he will prove most valuable to me.’ Dunn completed Rossetti’s unfinished paintings, and made very close replicas of others, so that today the work of master and assistant is sometimes indistinguishable. The model for this watercolour looks like WAS Benson, the designer and metalworker, who sat to Burne-Jones for the head of Pygmalion in The Soul Attains of 1875-8.

The finished oil painting for which this is a study was painted in 1872 (Stone Gallery catalogue, 1971, no. 30). Dunn was assistant to Dante Gabriel Rossetti from 1867-1881. The model here seems possibly to have been Charles Augustus Howell (see DG Rossetti, Washing Hands, Christie's lot 17 13 Dec 2012)