Provenance:
- Private collection of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), Rome, until 1837 (inscribed verso on the stretcher).
- Private collection, Switzerland.

During Horace Vernet's stay in Rome, where he held the post of director of the Académie de France, he worked on a design for a painting on the theme of Cain and Abel. This is documented in a letter from the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to his family, who visited Horace Vernet's studio at the Villa Medici on 15 March 1831 (see Lettre inédites de Mendelssohn traduites par A. A. Roland, Paris 1864, Lettre XXIV, pp. 118-120). It can be assumed that the oil study offered here, which is inscribed on the verso with "Esquisse de Hora. Vernet" on the verso, was created in this context. There is also a reference on the stretcher that the work was in the collection of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in Rome around 1837.