In this full length seated portrait the sitter is wearing academic robes, facing to the right with his hands on his lap. Sir Melville Arnott was born in Edinburgh in 1906 and graduated from Edinburgh University in medicine in 1931. He was the William Withering Professor of Medicine at Birmingham University between the years 1946 and 1971, following his military service in the Far East during WWII. He was one of the first medical staff to enter the concentration camp Bergen Belsen following the Nazi defeat in 1945. In 1971 he resigned from Birmingham University and took up the post of the British Heart Foundation chair of cardiology. He died in 1999.
Carel Weight was an English painter who was trained and exhibited his work in London . In 1962 he was appointed CBE and is represented in the Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum.