The following is submitted by Melita Pepper, stepdaughter of the artist. Ernest Lothar was born in Vienna to a Jewish family in 1906, as Ernest Lothar Deutsch. His mother painted as a hobby, and Ernest showed talent as soon as he could hold a pencil. As a youth he studied at the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts from 1922-1926, under Professor Adolf Boehm. After leaving the Academy he concentrated on copying old masters of the Italian School in the Kunsthistorichen Museum
