Because of its large size and polished execution the present work was more likely done after the 1947 oil painting of the same title (ed. D. Sylvester, René Magritte Catalogue raisonné, London, 1993, vol. II, no. 615) rather than as a preliminary study for it. It may have been drawn as a presentation piece intended for a friend or for inclusion in an exhibition. Magritte had been working with the idea of a ghost in a white sheet since early 1946; he initially planned to place the image in a framed picture hanging on the wall of a room. The setting has been moved outdoors in the oil painting and the present work, into which Magritte incorporates the female nude seen (unmasked) in La connaissance naturelle, 1941 (ed. D. Sylvester, op. cit., no. 488).