The painter Saša Šantel painted his self portrait following the established principles, holding a palette and brushes, wearing a white smock, with a slight turn of the body to the left, using his typical wide brush stroke and playing with colour contrasts and light effects, mostly on white surfaces. The painting is signed and dated in 1936.
Šantel also painted his monumental group portrait of Slovene composers in the same year; it was commissioned from him by the music society Glasbena matica and the Philharmonic Society for the renovated Philharmonic building in Ljubljana. The painter portrayed 37 composers of different periods in the picture, four of them are presented in sculpture or in an older picture. He grouped the figures inside a large room, according to generations and style orientations next to a grand piano, harmonium, and table. He also showed his own full-length figure at the back door, not as a composer but as a painter with a palette and brushes.
In fact, Šantel was also a musician. He was actively engaged in music already as a primary-school boy, he played violin and sang in the school choir, later he also learned to play viola and piano, he taught music in grammar school in Pazin, Istria, and played in various orchestras. He also worked at writing music and dedicated many of his compositions to choral singing.
Preparations for the painting for the Philharmonic building were demanding. Šantel took numerous photographs, made preparatory studies and oil portrait sketches. Although being only knee-length, the self portrait from the National Gallery’s collection is an exact model for the self portrait in the group portrait and probably served as a preparatory oil sketch for the painting in question.