Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield, succumbed to the disease. In 1930 Gertler married Marjorie Greatorex Hodgkinson, which resulted in the birth of a son, Luke Gertler, in 1932. The marriage was often difficult, punctuated by the frequent ill health of both, and with Gertler often suffering from the same feelings of constraint that destroyed his relationships with a number of friends and patrons. During the 1930s he became a part-time teacher at the Westminster School of Art in order to supplement his intermittent income from painting. He also undertook commercial work, including a series of posters for the Empire Marketing Board. A still-life design by him of a fruit bowl was among the winning entries in the 1933 Famous Artists competition run by Cadbury's for a series of chocolate box designs and which were displayed at the Leicester Galleries in London. Gertler gassed himself in his Highgate studio in 1939, having attempted suicide on at least one occasion in 1936. He was suffering at the time from increasing financial difficulties, his wife had recently left him, he had held a critically derided exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, he was still depressed over the death of his mother and Carrington's own suicide (both in 1932), and he was filled with fear over the imminent world war. He was buried at Willesden Jewish Cemetery. He died at 5, Grove Terrace, Highgate, London, and left a modest estate, valued at only £361, the administration of which was granted to Marjorie Greatorex Kostenz. Legacy Gertler's obituary in The Times described his death as "a serious loss to British art. Opinions of his work are likely to vary", it conceded, "but it is safe to say that a considered list of the half-dozen most important painters under fifty working in England would include him". Gertler's paintings are held in numerous public art collections, including in the Glasgow Museums. In June 2015 his 1912 painting The Violinist was auctioned for £542,500 at Christie's, London a record for the sale of his work. Gertler's former house and studio in Elder Street, Spitalfields, bears a blue plaque erected by the Greater London Council in 1975; while set into the pavement in front of it is a cast-iron roundel created by sculptor Keith Bowler in 1995, depicting a detail from Gertler's Merry-Go-Round. Notes References Further reading Sources External links 1891 births 1939 deaths 1939 suicides 20th-century English painters 20th-century English