Cigar-box lids were cheap, seasoned, portable painting panels, and they hold a real place in art history. In Melbourne in 1889 they gave the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition its name: Roberts, Streeton and Conder painted small plein-air impressions on cigar-box lids supplied by the cigar merchant Louis Abrahams, and the show became a landmark of Australian art. This little landscape sits in that same improvising tradition.

The Bremen cigar stamp on the reverse keeps the reuse visible. A panel that began as packaging for a German cigar brand became the ground for a painting, which turns a modest picture into a record of thrift and reuse as much as image-making. A tiny work, but not a minor object.