"Thesleff's ascetic and harmonious paintings", writes art historian Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, "convey a deeply meditative mood and in an intense, concentrated, spiritual way which all unnecessary sensory or momentary clutter has been removed to be able to hear the true inner voice.

"[3] Ellen Thesleff (1869–1954) grew up in a Swedish-speaking family of artists and musicians, learning to sing and play piano while her father practiced painting in his leisure time.

[5] In the early 1890s, Thesleff lived on Boulevard Raspail in Paris and began attending the Académie Colarossi in 1891 as an art student, where her teachers were Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret and Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois.

[1] Unlike art schools in Finland, Thesleff was afforded more freedom as a woman artist in France, where she was able to study nude models.

[2] Thesleff was part of a larger group of Finnish artists, including Magnus Enckell and Väinö Blomstedt [fi], who studied abroad and were influenced by the heady mixture of new ideas circulating in fin de siècle Paris.

[7] She completed several notable works during this time, including the drawing, Girl with a Guitar (1891), and the paintings Echo (1891), Thyra Elisabeth (1892), Aspens (1893), and Spring Night (1893).

[8] In January 1894, Thesleff graduated from the Académie Colarossi and headed to Italy,[1] spending the spring in Florence working with fellow artist Helene Schjerfbeck and studying Renaissance art.

[3] When Thesleff visited Paris, Symbolism was a popular art movement, with its followers emphasizing "the unseen ... imagination, spirituality, and dreams".

[2] In 1890s France, Symbolist Albert Aurier and occultist Joséphin Péladan popularized the idea that the Italian Renaissance had reached the pinnacle of art, and advocated returning to those older, more traditional values, such as those found in the trinity of the great masters: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

[13] The drawing was then gifted to Ernst Nordström, exhibition organizer and secretary of the Artists' Association of Finland, with the requirement that it be donated to an art collection accessible to the public after his death.

[1] Nordström passed away in 1933, and the work was subsequently donated to the Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum art museum, where it remains today.

[15] For over the last century, the work has been exhibited 28 times in Europe, primarily in Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, Belgium, England, and Norway.