Born in the Ukraine, Meninsky was from the same generation of great twentieth-century Anglo-Jewish artists that included David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, Jacob Kramer and Isaac Rosenberg. He exhibited a series of ‘Mother and Child’ drawings in his first solo show at the Goupil Gallery in 1919, which demonstrate the influence of his studies at the Slade under Henry Tonks and Frederick Brown. In this drawing, which dates from c.1930, the mother has taken on a monumental quality, which shows how strongly influenced Meninsky was by his European contemporaries, particularly Picasso.