This work is part of the Artist's Proofs reserved for the family, the first three having been reserved for the icasso Museums in Paris and Barcelona, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It comes from the collection of Marina Picasso. 

Aware of his own posterity, Picasso always plays with the great figures of art history. In the Suite de 156, as in the Suite Vollard decades before, Picasso echoes his elders, Rembrandt and Degas in particular. In the Suite, a special place is given to the fantasy of the Maison Tellier, the fictional brothel in Maupassant's story. Ambroise Vollard - the great publisher of Picasso's prints - had published a version of the story illustrated by Edgar Degas. In his series within a series, Picasso features Degas himself, the "lavaliered painter", painting in the setting of the Maison Tellier. This play recalls the Raphael and Fornarina plates, or even the appearance of Rembrandt in certain plates of the Suite Vollard.