Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work.
His journal entry for July 25, 1961, includes a color sketch of the painting God Is a Lily of the Valley. Indiana comments that the cancellation of an appointment with art dealer Allan Stone gave him the opportunity to begin work on the last two medium-size canvases that he had available. He further notes that these represented the last of the canvases that the artist Richard Smith had given him.