Jewish Family

Mark (b. Marks) Gertler grew up in poverty in Spitalfields, London. He received a scholarship from the Jewish Education Aid Society of London in 1908 to attend art classes and eventually studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Gertler was a committed pacifist—he rejected his patronage for political reasons in 1916, a commitment that impoverished him. Associating with Bloomsbury Group literary figures including Virginia Woolf, he inspired characters in the works of D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, and Katherine Mansfield. Battling tuberculosis, poverty, and depression, Gertler killed himself in his studio in London.