Sam Haile (1909-1948) was an important and active member of the Surrealist movement in London during the 1930s. He was an outspoken pacifist and anti-imperialist, and this work, considered his masterpiece, is thought to refer to the barbaric exploitation of the Congolese people by King Leopold II of Belgium during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This was a theme that preoccupied Haile at the time, and can be seen in other paintings such as Non Payment of Taxes, Congo, Christian Era (1937) - now in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art - with its palette of dark browns and black, and motif of the mutilated rubber tree, which was one of the main natural resources that was plundered. Here, Haile combines his distaste for colonial empire with his scepticism of psychiatry, and the psychiatrist of this painting is transformed into an elephant skull, with hideous, groping hands that plough the mind for logical, rational conclusions.

Haile emigrated to America at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Many of his paintings were lost or destroyed during this move, and others in a fatal car accident that the artist suffered in 1948, at the age of just 38. A total of only twelve canvases by the artist remain today, with over half of them already in museum collections. Since his death, Sam Haile's paintings and drawings have appeared in group Surrealist shows in Britain throughout the 1970's and 1980's, including the 1978 'Dada and Surrealism' exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. The work that survives from Haile's short life bears testament to his unique and unflinching vision.