This study is for the head, shoulder and sleeve of the figure playing the tambourine, beneath the violinist (Margaret Burne-Jones), halfway down the staircase.

Burne-Jones seems to have conceived the concept of a group of beautiful musicians descending a helical stair from 1872. After beginning the actual painting in 1876, he had to rush to finish it in time to be his only exhibit at the Grosvenor Gallery four years later. FG Stephens described the descending girls "troop[ing] past like spirits in an enchanted dream. … What is the place they have left, why they pass before us thus, whither they go, who they are, there is nothing to tell." 

This drawing was originally bound in a sketchbook given by the artist to Sir George and Lady Lewis, which was split up for sale in 2016.