Jelley studied in his native Lincoln with William Logsdail and Frank Bramley under ER Taylor (who later founded the Ruskin Pottery). When Taylor became Headmaster at the Birmingham School of Art he took Jelley with him, and Jelley then spent the next 40 years teaching there. Upon his retirement in 1917, the Birmingham Daily Mail lamented the school’s loss, and praised the artist for possessing ‘the rare skill of endowing his canvases with the glow of nature in her most radiant aspects’ ( 21 July 1917, p 5).