Mark Gertler was born in Spitalfields, London. He went to study at the Regent Street Polytechnic between 1906 and 1907. There, with the advice of William Rothenstein he enrolled at the Slade, studying under Henry Tonks between 1908 and 1912.

At the Slade, Gertler was considered the best draughtsman since Augustus John. He was awarded a Slade scholarship in 1909. His contemporaries included Nevinson, Spencer and Dora Carrington.

During 1912 to 1914 Gertler’s compositions centered around his Jewish background. It provided him with a means of disconnecting himself from bourgeois art and re-discovering his origins. In a letter to Edward Marsh in October 1913 he wrote; 'If God will help me put into my work that passion, that inspiration, that profundity of soul that I know I possess, I will triumph over those learned Cambridge youths,.