A pencil study of the head and shoulders of a woman, depicted in profile left, with elaborate plaited hair and her eyes closed. Roses and briars surround her.

It is probable that this head is a study for the female attendant who lies sleeping next to Sleeping Beauty in one of the versions of 'The Rose Bower', a subject which, in its turn, features in three series of paintings by Burne-Jones based on the fairytale. There is another study, in oils, identified as for the head of this figure in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The fairytale of Sleeping Beauty provided inspiration for Burne-Jones at a number of points during his career. Early on, he executed ten designs for decorative tiles which were commissioned from the painter Myles Birket Foster from the decorative firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. In 1873, less than a decade later, Burne-Jones completed three paintings depicting episodes from the story for the Pre-Raphaelite patron William Graham, which are known as the "small" Briar Rose series (now in the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico). Over the next twenty or so years Burne-Jones remained preoccupied with the story, creating the larger Briar Rose series of four paintings. These works were exhibited at Agnews in 1890 to great critical acclaim before being bought by Alexander Henderson, first Lord Faringdon, who installed them at his seat at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire. During the long period of time during which Burne-Jones worked on these four paintings, he rejected three of his already-begun compositions and reworked the designs, beginning new canvases. Between 1892 and 1894 the artist then returned to the three rejected paintings and completed them.

Payment records attest to Queen Alexandra buying a corpus of drawings by Burne-Jones in 1904. Though the provenance of the other Burne-Jones drawings in the Royal Collection is unknown, it does not seem likely that they would have belonged to Queen Victoria.