The Artist's Parents

Gertler's touching double-portrait of his parents, created during his student years at the Slade School of Fine Art, demonstrates his understanding of chiaroscuro (the treatment of light and shade in painting and drawing), as he captures not only their likenesses but also their relative positions within the household and his own life; his relationship with his father never fully recovered from their separation during his early childhood after his father left Galicia to seek work in America, before the family was eventually reunited in London, less than a mile from where Mark had been born. Although Louis appears in the foreground of the picture, it is his mother, Golda, with her large capable hand resting upon her husband's shoulder, who dominates the portrait just as she did family life. Her close relationship to her youngest son is illustrated by her strong and recurring presence in his early portraiture.