Daniels’ self-portrait, executed with pen-and-ink and white paint upon paper, combines both drawing and painting techniques and invokes several processes: the monochrome colouring suggests a black-and-white photograph but also creates the illusion of a woodcut, while the chalky white surface points to his practice as a mural painter.

Daniels had worked early in his career as a commercial artist and taught himself the art of illustration and to retouch photographs while working at his uncle’s commercial studio. A self-portrait, dating to 1950, in the Ruth Borchard Collection, inscribed ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, is observed from a similar angle and using a chalky palette.