Eva Frankfurther portrays her subject with a quiet dignity and compassion underlined by the muted palette. Born into a cultured, assimilated Jewish family in Berlin in 1930, Frankfurther escaped to London with her family in 1939, following the rise of Nazism. She studied at St Martin’s School of Art (1946–1951), moving to Whitechapel after graduating and earning her living in the evenings as a counter-hand at Lyons Corner House and, later, in a sugar refinery, while painting by day. Inspired by artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Käthe Kollwitz and Picasso, she took as her subject the ethnically diverse, largely immigrant population among whom she lived and worked. Her humane studies of the new West Indian, Cypriot and Pakistani communities, portrayed with dignity and respect, both at work and at rest, are perhaps her greatest achievement.