Fran Windischer (1877−1955) was an economist, a collector and a patron of Slovene fine arts and of the National Gallery. Through a series of donations, Windischer, who was also president of the National Gallery Society from 1929 until 1946, made a significant contribution to the growth, present form and overall solidity of the National Gallery art collection. The Windischer bequest is still one of the foundations of the gallery’s collections today.

Peter Loboda received his elementary training in sculpture at the Secondary Technical School in Ljubljana, where he was taught by Alojzij Repič. He went on to study at the Academy of Arts in Zagreb with the Croatian sculptors Rudolf Valdec, Robert Frangeš Mihanović and Ivan Meštrović. He worked in Meštrović’s Zagreb studio in 1926 and 1927. Ten years later he created a monumental, realistic and psychologically insightful portrait of Fran Windischer, which he exhibited alongside his other sculptures at his first solo exhibition in Jakopič’s Art Pavilion in 1938.