This drawing accompanied a copy of Jean Cocteau’s Le Mystère de Jean L’oiseleur: Monologues (Paris, 1925; 130 numbered works and 12 not for sale accompanied by an original drawing). The colophon is signed: J’ai ajouté pour les amis des mes livres douze exemplaires hors commerce avec un dessin original. The drawing was given by Cocteau to the Parisian lithographer Fernand Mourlot, whose atelier produced the majority of his lithographs during these years (the copy dedicated, signed, and dated on the front cover à Férnand Mourlot/ son ami/ Jean, 1955). In 1997, the Estate of Férnand Mourlot displayed part of its archive in an exhibition of drawings and original editions at the Bordas Gallery in Venice. This work and others were acquired by Giorgio Mastinu (gallery assistant from 1995), from whom it was acquired by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Furniture and stage designs by Jean Cocteau for his play The Knights of the Round Table, 1937, were the subject of Peggy Guggenheim’s first exhibition at her Guggenheim Jeune Gallery, London, in 1938 (January 24–Februry 12). Peggy owned a drawing by him at the time of her death in 1979, which she left instructions should be given to her friend Vittorio Fiorazzo.