Ernst Eisenmayer was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920 and moved to London in 1939 after escaping Dachau concentration camp with the aid of the Oxford Professor J.L. Brierley. Eisenmayer became a student at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. A pupil of Victor Pasmore (1908-1998), Eisenmayer exhibited at both the Leicester Galleries and Marjorie Parr Gallery, and between the years 1964 and 1972 he held a series of solo exhibitions at the Mercury Gallery, from which the Burton family purchased the present lot in 1966 (see D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945, Bristol, 2006, p. 466.).