On the back, Vilhelm Hammershøi's mother Frederikke Hammershøi has written: With pencil (in Danish): Vilhelm on a hunt for a parrot, Frederiksberg Allé. Summer 1873. Drawn by Vilhelm 1873. With pen (in Danish) : Vilhelm frees a parrot, which has been captured because a chain, that was attached to its leg, has wound itself around a branch in a tree on Frederiksberg Allé. Many spectators have gathered.

Hammershøi's mother had an unfailing belief in her son's artistic talent, dating back to his earliest childhood, and throughout her life she collected virtually all the material by and about her son; his earliest drawings, newspaper clippings, accounts of his drawing lessons, etc.. Much of this material is today at the Hirschsprung Collection.

From 1871 until he married Ida Ilsted in 1891, Vilhelm Hammershøi lived with his entire family: parents, siblings, grandmother (widow Rentzmann) and servants in a villa on Frederiksberg Allé 34 (today no. 58–60).

Provenance: The collection of curator Harald Olsen. Thence by descent.

Harald Olsen was a curator at the National Gallery of Denmark 1949–83 and good friends with Alfred Bramsen's daughter, Karen Bramsen (1877–1970) and her husband Gustav Falck (1874–1955), who from 1925 to 1930 was director of the National Gallery of Denmark. Most of the works by Vilhelm Hammershøi in Harald Olsen's collection were probably acquired directly from Karen Bramsen.