This rare early work is one of the only pictures in Kossoff's entire career to present a Jewish subject.

In his rare interviews and artist's statements Kossoff has always given precedence to drawing: '... looking back it seems that I have been endlessly engaged in the self-imposed activity of trying to teach myself to draw from lifeI think of painting as a form of drawing.' (Leon Kossoff, Artist's Statement, included in Contemporary British Artists, 1979). In the seriousness of this approach one stimulus was David Bomberg. Kossoff's friend Frank Auerbach, encouraged him to attend Bomberg's classes at the Borough polytechnic and although Kossoff's use of drawing is highly individual, it has roots in his understanding and appreciation of Bomberg. As Kossoff has observed:

'Bomberg stressed the importance of drawing from the model. He was a brilliant natural draughtsman. But it was Bomberg the man that really impressed me. He had had a troubled life and had a sense that the world was against him and still succeeded in producing a number of great worksBomberg's 'spirit in the mass' was not just about the artist transforming a site or person into a new entity, but about drawing out the spirit from the subject. It's not just what the artist brings to it(Leon Kossoff, letter to James Hyman, 10 October 1989).Several of his most important early portraits were of a sitter named Seedo. In the catalogue for Kossoff's retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1996, Paul Moorhouse writes that 'Kossoff's principal model was the writer N. M. Seedo who was one of the first of his friends prepared to sit for him regularly. He worked continuously on a group of drawings for about three months, moving from one sheet to the next, constantly erasing and then restating each image. Finally most of these drawings were erased.'

Surviving drawings, such as the present work and a related drawing in the British Museum, were included in Kossoff's first one-person exhibition at the famous Beaux Arts Gallery in London. Helen Lessore, who ran the gallery, later recalled that 'if one happened to see a whole row of these life-size charcoal drawings of seated, sleeping figures, glimmering blackly through the glass, leaning against a wall, it was as if one had come upon a row of effigies in the underground darkness of a tomb of kings... Seedo, somnolently brooding like an Eastern idol...' (Helen Lessore, 'Leon Kossoff' in A Partial Testament, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1986).

This and drawings of his family around the Seder table on Passover, which were also exhibited in the 1959 exhibition, led viewers to discern a spiritual or even religious dimension, although this is something that Kossoff himself has always sought to resist. However, that same year, in one of his first interviews, Kossoff characterised Soutine in a way that summarised his own achievements:

'... Of course my Jewishness must emerge in my work, so must my love of Rembrandt and Michelangelo and all the things that matter to me ... But it is not just a question of subject matter. I prefer the living reality of Soutine, who never used a Jewish symbol, to the sweetness of ChagallSoutine, like all great painters, has had to destroy all the wrappings of conventional thought which were between him and the creation of the living image, and though in the end he seems to reveal only his miserable Jewish self, he does so in a living atmosphere of grandeur and immortality which transcends national or religious barriers.' (Leon Kossoff, interview with N.G. Stone in 'The Artist and the Community', The Jewish Chronicle, 27 November 1959).

In Seder Night figures emerge from a dark ground and are rendered in heavy charcoal and yellow pastel which has the resonance of candle light. The scene is evoked, rather than described, and the presence of the people can be felt and sensed rather than fully seen. As the artist explains:

'I try to recreate the pictorial image. I struggle for truth... How hard it is to paint! I can spend years on a painting and months on a drawing... Nothing comes easily to me. I go on until the picture becomes a mutation, a miracle, something unexpected, even by me. Then it is finished.' (Leon Kossoff, interview with N.G. Stone, quoted in 'The Artist & the Community', The Jewish Chronicle, 27 November 1959).