During the Second World War, Laura Knight undertook a number of commissions for the War Artists Advisory Committee which was chaired by Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery. When the War had ended, but she still had two unfinished commissions to carry out, she approached the Committee with her suggestion that she paint the Nuremberg War Trials instead. The Committee agreed to pay her 500 guineas for the task and she spent January to April 1946 at Nuremberg. The other War Artists had to sketch from the balcony using opera glasses but Knight insisted on sitting in an empty broadcasting box belonging to the Americans.

A smaller chalk sketch together with the finished oil (70 x 60in.) are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, London
(See C. Fox, Dame Laura Knight, Oxford, 1988, p.p.101-14)