The artist identified the subject on a label attached to the original frame: "Beware of her fair hair, for she excells [sic]/ All women in the magic of her locks,/ And when she twines them round a young man's neck/ she will not ever set him free again." These lines are taken from Shelley's translation of the Walpurgisnacht scene in Goethe's "Faust." Here, as in Rosetti's other drawings and paintings of Lady Lilith, the artist's mistress, Fanny Cornforth, served as the model. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's drawing is one of two watercolor replicas of the painting of Lady Lilith in the Bancroft Collection in the Delaware Art Museum. It is attributed partly to Henry Treffry Dunn, one of Rossetti's assistants.

Inscription: [in ink on a label at the back of the frame, in Rossetti's handwriting]: Lady Lilith. Watercolor. D.G. Rossetti 1867. / "Beware of her hair, for she excells (sic) / All women in the magic of her locks / And when she twines them round a young man's neck / She will not ever set him free again."

Marking: Monogram and date

William Coltart (British, ca. 1820–1903), by 1886; R. E. Tatham (British, died ca. 1907), sold by his estate in 1908; Christie's, London, March 7, 1908, no. 81(bought by Thomas Agnew & Son, Ltd.); Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd. (London); Vendor: Roger Eliot Fry (British, Highgate, Middlesex 1866–1934 London)

"Recent Accessions and Notes." in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 6, no. 6, New York, June 1911, p. 139.

Virginia Surtees The Paintins and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonné. Oxford University Press, 2, Oxford, 1971, cat. no. no. 205, R.1, vol. I, p. 117.