This relief is derived from Figure with Guitar, 1922. Late in that year the dealer Paul Guillaume introduced Lipchitz to Dr. Albert Barnes who bought a number of his sculptures. Dr. Barnes commissioned Lipchitz to design reliefs for five locations in his museum in Merion, Pennsylvania.

These reliefs, on which I worked throughout 1923,
again represent a break-through for me, the
consolidation of a number of ideas that had been
fermenting during the previous years. I made a
number of small clay maquettes for them, studying
variations on the problem. In these the theme is
principally that of a reclining figure with guitar,
figures with musical instruments, or simply still
lifes of musical instruments. What I was searching for essentially was that total integration of the objects,
the guitar or other musical intruments, with the
figure so that the result would be a figure-guitar
rather than simply a figure holding a guitar.
(J. Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972,
p. 73)