The Hours depicts the passing of time, with the same figure representing each stage from morning until evening. Morning is symbolised by this figure waking and brushing her hair whilst by the evening she is shown sleeping. Burne-Jones has used colour and light to create harmony throughout the work. It is a complicated and detailed design that took him twelve years to complete. He wrote ‘Every little lady … wears a lining of the colour of the hour before her and a sleeve of the hour coming after.’ Burne-Jones was greatly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, whose interests lay in depicting medieval and mythical subject matter.