This painting was commissioned for the Autumn 1944 issue of Angry Penguins that first published Ern Malley's collected poems, The Darkening Ecliptic. The painting bears two inscriptions: 'Here the peacock blinks the eyes of his multipiece tail' and 'I said to my love (who is living) / Dear we shall never be that verb / Perched on the sole Arabian tree'. Both quotes are from the Ern Malley poem 'Petit Testament'.
The painting was reproduced in colour on the cover of the Autumn 1944 issue of Angry Penguins and reproduced in black and white as the frontispiece of the 1944 monograph publication of The Darkening Ecliptic.