Xarifa: the Zegri lady rose not, etc.

Wyburd was a painter of genre, literary and historical subjects who entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1848. He had already won the Silver Medal of the Society of Arts (1845) and begun to show at the Academy in 1846, where he continued to exhibit until 1889. He also supported the British Institution, the Society of British Artists and others. 'The characteristics of Mr Wyburd's art', wrote James Dafforne in the Art Journal, 'are, principally, a perfect realisation of female beauty, an attractive manner in setting out his figures, and a refinement of finish which is sometimes carried almost to excess' (1877 vol., p.140).
Although he never seems to have travelled further than north Italy (with the landscape painter George E. Hering in 1858), he often painted Eastern subjects of a fashionable romantic kind, inevitably drawing at least some of his inspiration from Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh: an Oriental Romance. Largely forgotten today, the 1817 publication went on to inspire artists, musicians, composers, choreographers, and many others. Even the East India Company named one of its ships after Moore’s title character, while Barnum and Bailey staged a spectacular circus pageant to recreate her mythical entourage. Moore’s epic “Frame Tale,” about the journey of a Mughal princess from Delhi to Kashmir to marry a neighbouring king, was a runaway hit. The author was not an “Orientalist,” but according to his own introduction to the poem, he was encouraged by friends including George Byron to take on the exotic subject. Moore had never been to India either, but he managed to create an enormously enduring tale that was still in print 100 years later. Marrying fact and fantasy, the plot follows the remarkable journey of Lalla Rookh (“tulip-cheeked”), a fictional daughter of Emperor Aurungzeb (r. 1658–1707). Wyburd, was said to have been particularly enthralled by the story, motivating him to create several paintings inspired by it.