This study (recorded in the Catalogue Raisonné as D# 0439) is one of a pair of chalk and watercolour sketches of prisoners in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, executed by Dame Laura Knight, who had been an Official War Artist during the Second World War and was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to attend the Nuremberg Trials. These began in 1945 and saw the conviction of 19 major Nazi war criminals including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Hans Frank and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Knight executed a series of studies that were later realised on a large-scale canvas as the painting, The Dock, Nuremberg 1946 (Catalogue Raisonné #0712, Imperial War Museum), depicting the trial in courtroom no. 600 in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice.

This large-scale drawing depicts one portion of the final painting showing the white-helmeted military guards at the centre of the picture and four of the defendants in the first row: furthest from the viewer is Goering, dressed in the distinctive white suit that he wore throughout the proceedings and hunched over to listen attentively through his headphones, beside him is Rudolf Hess, his head bent downwards, revealing a bald patch, with his pen poised over his notes, then Ribbentrop, wearing black-rimmed spectacles and civilian clothes, sitting upright and facing forward with folded hands, and finally, nearest to the viewer, sitting upright, wearing an army tunic and also listening through headphones is Wilhelm Kietel; just seen, leaning forward in the row behind, with his chin on his hand, is Karl Dönitz.

The author Philippe Sands, writing about the painting for Art UK, has noted that in it, Goering occupies the place in which 'he actually sat throughout the trial. Yet many of the other defendants have been shifted around by the artist, for reasons that cannot be known'. In this study, Goering again occupies his actual place at the end of the row but two of the defendants in the line-up in the final painting have been omitted. The drawing shows the meticulous realist style and close attention to detail for which Knight was celebrated.