Little is known of the artist, S Mindel, but this work is clearly a copy of a famous work by the Hungarian Jewish painter Isidor Kauffman (1853-1921), 'Friday Evening in Brody' (then a city in the region of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire, now a city in Lviv Oblast (region) of western Ukraine), which presumably inspired his own. Historically, the Jewish population in Galicia was one of the oldest and best-known. Kaufmann visited the region in 1904, where, according to his wife, he found 'an abundance of material'. Mindel's painting, like Kauffman's, depicts the moment just before dusk falls on Friday evening at the start of the Sabbath, when observant Jews are seen hurrying to the synagogue to attend service. It is possible that Mindel copied the painting as an act of homage to Kaufmann although his painting style is considerably less polished. The Ben Uri Minutes for 5 November 1934 record that a work by Mindel had been purchased for £5.