Mark Gertler was born in London in 1891 into a Jewish-Polish immigrant family living in the east end of London. In 1908, after receiving funding from the Jewish Education Aid Society, Gertler enrolled at the Slade School of Art, and studied under the infamous Professor of Drawing, Henry Tonks. His contemporaries during his four years at the Slade included the so-called 'Crisis of Brilliance' generation: Paul Nash, David Bomberg, C.R.W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, and Dora Carrington, whom Gertler loved unrequitedly throughout his life. Prodigiously talented, these artists were all fundamentally changed by the outbreak of WWI in 1914. Whilst at the Slade, Gertler gained a reputation as a particularly talented draughtsman, winning several painting prizes, a two-year Slade scholarship in 1909 and a British Institute Scholarship in 1911.

Gertler first exhibited at the Friday Club in 1911, and was elected to the London Group in 1915. His first solo show was with the Goupil Gallery in 1921, with whom he had several solo and group exhibitions throughout his career. Gertler was a conscientious objector during WWI, painting the seminal 'Merry-Go-Round', 1916 (Tate), to reflect his vision of the death and destruction wreaked on the European world. After the war, in 1920, Gertler was diagnosed with tuberculosis and confined to a sanatorium, the first of many quarantines he underwent throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Gertler married Marjorie Hodgkinson in 1930, and they had a son, Luke, in 1932, but the 1930s were beset by personal and professional difficulties for him including the suicide of Carrington, the death of his mother in 1932, and a prolonged stay at a sanatorium in 1936. Weighed down by growing unease at the political situation in Europe and by the burden of financial and emotional problems, Gertler committed suicide in 1939.

Extraordinarily talented, Gertler remains amongst the most significant and internationally renowned British artists of the twentieth-century. Influenced by the Post-Impressionist exhibitions organised at the start of the 1910s by Roger Fry and later by Picasso, following a trip to Paris in 1920, Gertler developed a highly individual, recognisable, and potent modernist aesthetic. Bold, sculptural, classical yet exotic, with his characteristic, lusciously autumnal palette, Gertler particularly excelled at still-lives, nudes, and portraits. Tormented, depressed, constantly in love, arguing with lovers, friends and collectors alike, he was variously patronised by Lady Ottoline Morrell, art collector Edward Marsh, and poet Gilbert Cannan, adored by D.H. Lawrence and detested by Virginia Woolf. Major posthumous exhibitions were held at the Whitechapel, 1949; the Ashmolean Museum, 1971; the Camden Arts Centre, 1992; Ben Uri, The London Jewish Museum of Art, 2002; and Piano Nobile, 2012. His work is held in major international collections including Tate Gallery; the National Portrait Gallery, London; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

From the mid-1930s onward, Gertler painted nudes in a neo-classical manner, with a 1934 exhibition of these female figures at the Leicester Galleries, London. 'The Sari', 1938, alongside 'The Mandolinist', 'Nude with a Mandolin', 'The Sonata', 1934 and 'The Red Shawl (Mrs. Rene Diamond)', 1938, collectively represent a return, in his later painting, to the classicism that Gertler had so admired as a student. The depiction of the human form, and particularly the female body, is one of the central concerns of Gertler’s work and the vehicle for some of his most imaginative and successful paintings. This interest in the human body can be traced back to Gertler’s training at the Slade and his tutelage in life drawing under Henry Tonks. This period, however, also articulates a renewed sense of energy on the part of the artist and a boldly modernist mindset, in particular allusions to Picasso’s nudes of this period are evident.

'The Sari' is one of his last recorded works, painted amidst the tumult and depression of his final years. Gertler's palette attests to the 'highly spiced and glowing' colours of the 1930s as identified by his biographer Woodeson (1972, p. 323), and his treatment of form is lyrical but strong, also typical of his later years. 'The Sari' relates to 'The Red Shawl (Mrs Rene Diamond)', 1938; The Monsoon Art Collection, and possibly also 'The Yellow Shawl', as exhibited at the Lefevre Galleries in 1937 (no. 17). With a monumental neo-classical air, the woman in the sari has aquiline features - a strong nose, womanly form with curvaceous waist and hips, a hand gesture to the viewer echoing classical sculpture. Her dark hair, prominent eyebrows, heavily delineated eyes, and colourful sari suggest not a Renaissance model but a contemporary Indian woman. Bold, tactile strokes of rich paint, most likely almost entirely applied with a palette knife, make this an eminently sensual painting. Full of sinuous curves and luscious colours, ‘The Sari’ is realised with Gertler's unparalleled sense of sculptural, voluptuous form.