The textured surface, high colouring and complex composition is typical of Gertler’s still lifes during the 1930s. Musical instruments, in combination with other still life objects, were a common motif during this period. Mark Gertler was born in Spitalfields in 1891 to Austrian-Jewish parents. The family was repatriated the following year but returned to London’s East End in 1896. After a brief training at the Regent Street Polytechnic, Gertler attended the Slade School of Art from 1908 to 1911 on the recommendation of William Rothenstein, winning a number of prizes and leaving with a British Institute Scholarship. Post-Slade Gertler embraced Post-Impressionism, fusing Jewish subject matter with modernist techniques. His most radical work, 'Merry-Go-Round', completed in 1916, expressed his pacifist views during the First World War.