Provenance: Icelandic artist Hörður Ágústsson (1922–2005), Reykjavik, Iceland. By descent in his family.

The gouache was acquired by Hörður Ágústsson through a Parisian art gallery, possibly Denise René, in 1952. The occasion may have been his marriage to Sigríður Magnúsdóttir in Paris in June 1952. They had met in Paris, where they studied, a few years before. Hörður Ágústsson (1922–2005) first studied at the Academy of the Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1945–46) and then at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1947–49), took private lessons from Marcel Gromaire (1949–50), and opened his first private show in Galerie Raymond Duncan in Paris in 1949. He was of the generation of painters that introduced abstract art in Iceland in the 1950s.

The acquisition of the gouache is probably related to the collection of works for an exhibition of (mostly) French art that opened in Reykjavík in January 1953. The works are described as being mainly aquarelles, gouaches, lithographs, and drawings. Names mentioned in newspaper articles related to th exhibition are Arp, Braque, Deyrolle, Dumitriescu, Estève, Gishia, Herbin, Jacobsen, Kandinsky, Laurens, Léger, Magnelli, Manessier, Mortensen, Picasso, Pillet, and Vasarely. Herbin is praised in a long review of the exhibition by artist Valtýr Pétursson in Morgunblaðið 31 January 1953 and in a brief review n Tíminn 27 January 1953. According to newspaper articles, Hörður Ágústsson brought the artworks to Reykjavík, having bought them on behalf of various collectors before he returned from Paris in the summer of 1952.