Academic French painter Albert Aublet exhibited three paintings at the Paris Salon in 1905: Femme de Djerba (Tunisie) (no. 47); Dans l’oasis (no. 48); and La chambre vert (no. 49). One of the three is illustrated in the accompanying exhibition catalogue with a caption that confuses two of the paintings’ titles, Dans L’oasis (Tunisie). Dressed in traditional Tunisian garb, a mother kisses her young child on the cheek in a tender embrace. In the Salon-exhibited picture, the child’s eyes are closed. In the present painting, which is signed Aublet at lower left, the child’s eyes are open. The whereabouts of the Salon picture are unknown, as are its dimensions, making it difficult to determine whether the present work is in fact that picture, or a copy.

This painting came with and hung in Prince’s Paris apartment, at 60 avenue Foch, which he occupied for the better part of ten years beginning in 1987 and shared with his then wife, Mayte, to whom the painting passed.