‘Thisbe’, this relates to the left-hand panel of the ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ triptych now in the Williamson Art Gallery at Birkenhead, Wirral, UK. The triptych is in watercolour with bodycolour on vellum, and the panels measure 36.2 x 26cm. (Thisbe, left),36.1 x 12.9cm. (Cupid, centre) and 36.2 x 26cm. (Pyramus, right). According to Burne-Jones’s autograph work-record (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), it was started in 1872 and completed in 1876.
The figure in this painting painting differs in several respects from the one in the triptych. It is obviously the same, but the handling is much freer and there are variations in the treatment of the hair, drapery and hand.
Given its size it is likely a fragement of an unfinished larger version of the triptych. Burne-Jones often painted more than one version of his compositions. By no means all of them were finished, and it is not uncommon to find unfinished canvases that have been cut down to make them into marketable commodities.
- from information provided by John Christian, author and Burne-Jones scholar