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. After the Slade School of Art (1908-12) Gertler embraced Post-Impressionism. His most radical work, 'Merry-Go-Round', completed in 1916, expressed his pacifist views during the First World War. During the 1920s, part of a wider European return to figuration, he concentrated on female subjects, particularly nudes, and still lifes, revisiting these subjects in the 1930s with a new concentration on form and composition.