After studying at the Camberwell School of Art, Hobdell worked as a commercial artist, until the late 1930s when he met the surrealist designer, mask-maker and photographer Angus McBean, with whom he shared a love of theatre and ballet. Their friendship led to Hobdell working on a number of McBean’s backdrops, and painting trompe l’oeil murals for McBean’s apartment in Covent Garden, and for Lord Faringdon at his country house, Buscot Park. He designed sets for the Ballets Nègres in the late 1940s, and for The Magic Flute amongst other productions. He had a surreal, magical imagination, and was described by Lord Faringdon as ‘a wayward genius’. Although Hobdell had major exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery (in 1951) and at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery, he also occasionally sold his paintings through Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square. He signed only the Peter Jones pictures (ours is one of those) with the names of his two cats, Giles and Emma Farquharson.

This picture includes white irises, narcissi, Darwin tulips and convolvulus, attended in the twilight not by butterflies, but by moths.