In addition to being an important gallery owner in New York, Curt Valentin was active as a publisher of illustrated books, artist's books and books about art. In 1949 he published Ralph Manheim's translation, the first in English, of The Novices of Sais by Novalis, the pen-name of the Eighteenth Century German Romantic poet Friedrich von Hardenberg. André Masson provided a drawing of the poet for the frontispiece. Sixty drawings by Paul Klee, including the present work, were incorporated into the text. Stephen Spender wrote in the preface: "This is a curiously interior world; a world of pure art and pure contemplation, of imagist poems, and an intense, glowing yet humorous and meticulous imagination. The drawings here are not meant as illustration, but as parallels, a kind of reflection of the world of Novalis within the world of Paul Klee."

A photo-certificate from Josef Helfenstein and Stefan Frey of the Paul Klee-Stiftung accompanies this drawing.