Although clearly intended as an independent artwork rather than a study, the present drawing relates to a series of depictions of the classical poet Sappho and her lover Erinna made by Solomon in the 1860s. Of these, the best-known is Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene of 1864 (Tate) painted for the industrialist James Leathart and now celebrated as one of the most significant Victorian pictures of same-sex desire. In the same year Solomon made a pen and ink drawing of Erinna Taken from Sappho (private collection, Canada) which attempts to convey the tragedy of the love between Sappho and Erinna and perhaps also Solomon's own insecurities about his own sexuality. However these were not the earliest in the series; in 1862 Solomon made a pencil drawing of the profile of Sappho (Tate) which closely resembles the present drawing made twenty-four years later. The fact that Solomon returned to the subject of Erinna, and placed her as the subject of the present drawing rather than as the subsidiary figure in a romantic tragedy, shows the importance she held in Solomon's imagination. It conveys the melancholic atmosphere so apparent in much of Solomon's work of this period combined with eroticism in the pouting full lips of the model and the heavy-lidded languor of her eyes.

SIMEON SOLOMON, SAPPHO AND ERINNA IN A GARDEN AT MYTILENE, 1864, TATE