After his final performance as a dancer in 1919 Nijinsky's mental health deteriorated and the rest of his life was spent mainly in mental hospitals where he worked on various aspects of ballet and began to draw. Many of his drawings are now with the museum of the Paris Opéra. The present cursory sketch, possibly of a mouse threatened by a larger force, dates presumably from the last years of his life after he and his family moved to England in 1947