Josef Herman was a Polish born painter who became a British citizen in 1948. He was born in Warsaw, the son of a Jewish cobbler, and studied at the Warsaw School of Art, 1930-31. In 1938 he moved to Brussels, then in 1940 to Glasgow, where he became a friend of another Polish refugee, Jankel Adler. He moved to London in 1943, then from 1944 to 1953 lived in the Welsh mining village of Ystradgynlais. Herman is best known for his sombre pictures of Welsh miners, with whom he felt a strong affinity. He often showed their black figures silhouetted against the sun: 'This image of the miners on the bridge against a glowing sky mystified me for years with its mixture of sadness and grandeur."

Much of his time at Ystradgynlais was spent underground observing the life of the miners. Herman made a considerable reputation with his mining scenes and was commissioned to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain in 1951 (Miners, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum, Swansea). In subsequent paintings he depicted the life of other working people he had seen on his extensive travels, which are documented in his book Related Twilights: Notes from an Artist's Diary (1975).