Due to his family's poverty, he was forced to drop out after a year, and in December 1907, he began working as an apprentice at Clayton & Bell, a stained glass company.

In 1908, Gertler was placed third in a national art competition and it inspired him to apply for a scholarship from the Jewish Education Aid Society (JEAS)[A] to resume his studies as an artist.

During the four years he spent at the Slade, Gertler was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, C. R. W. Nevinson, Sir Stanley Spencer, Isaac Rosenberg, and Morris Goldstein, among others.

[11] His obsessive love for Carrington is detailed in his published letters (see bibliography below) and in Sarah MacDougall's book Mark Gertler.

[15] Gertler was soon enjoying success as a painter of society portraits, but his temperamental manner and devotion to advancing his work according to his own vision led to increasing personal frustration and the alienation of potential sitters and buyers.

The relationship between the two men proved a difficult one as Gertler felt that the system of patronage and the circle in which he moved were in direct conflict with his sense of self.

Cannan closely based the young Jewish character of his 1916 novel Mendel on Gertler's early life, including his infatuation and affair with fellow artist Dora Carrington.

[17][18] Virginia Woolf recorded her impressions of Gertler after he came to visit her and her husband in Sussex in September 1918:[19] "Good God, what an egoist!"

I suspect the truth to be that he is very anxious for the good opinion of people like ourselves, & would immensely like to be thought well of by Duncan [Grant], Vanessa [Bell] & Roger [Fry].

However this is honestly outspoken, & as I say, he has power & intelligence, & will, one sees, paint good interesting pictures, though some rupture of the brain would have to take place before he could be a painter.Gertler's later works developed a sometimes very harsh edge, influenced by his increasing ill health.

[22] 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.

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 died at 5, Grove Terrace, Highgate, London, and left a modest estate, valued at only £361, the administration of which was granted to his ex-wife, now remarried, Marjorie Greatorex Kostenz.

[30] Gertler's former house and studio in Elder Street, Spitalfields, bears a blue plaque erected by the Greater London Council in 1975.

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.