The bass-baritone singer and artist Fernando Autori (1886-1937) was born in Calatafini, Sicily, and despite originally wanting to become a painter, studied pharmacy at the University of Palermo before leaving to study singing with Antonio Cantelli. He made his debut as an opera singer in 1908 at the Teatro Bellini in Naples, and first appeared at La Scala, Milan in 1924. He made several successful appearances at Covent Garden and other European opera houses in the 1930s.

During his operatic career in London Autori met Rupert D’Oyly Carte, Director of the D’Oyly Carte Company from 1913 to 1948, whose portrait he drew along with those of other conductors and personalities associated with the company. Several of Autori’s portraits were commissioned to appear in the periodical The Tatler, including his portraits of theatre impresario Charles Cochran, the writer H.G. Wells and the politician Ramsay Macdonald. This portrait of the conductor and composer Dr. Malcolm Sargent (1895-1967) was published in The Tatlerin December 1929 when Sargent was conducting the 1929-1930 London season of D’Oyly Carte opera at the newly-restored Savoy Theatre. The treatment of the depiction of the orchestra pit with its angular reduced shapes for the violinists and wind players reveals the influence on his work of Italian Futurist artists such as Tommaso Marinetti and Gino Severini.

Malcolm Sergant (1895-1967) became a Doctor of Music in 1919, aged 24, and went on the become one of Britain's best-known conductors. His career break came early in 1921 when he conducted the first performance of his own composition, at the request of Henry Wood at Leicester's De Montfort Hall. Wood asked him to conduct that season's 'Proms' or the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts at Queen's Hall in London that year. In 1926 Sergant began an association with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company that was to last intermittently throughout his career. He conducted their 1926 season at the Prince's Theatre, at the newly-rebuilt Savoy Theatre for their 1929-1930 seaon, at the summer 1951 Festival of Britain season at the Savoy Theatre, and the 1961–62 and 1963–64 winter seasons there. He was knighted for his services to music in 1947 and was chief conductor of the Proms from 1947 until 1967 when he made a valedictory appearance at the end of the Last Night of the Proms, handing over his baton to his successor, Colin Davis.