Jelley's flower pictures in oil and watercolour appeared regularly at the Birmingham Society of Artists, and in 1926, a special collection of 50 were accorded their own room in the Autumn Exhibition, all 'individual beauties ... that promise a permanent joy'. Ten years before that, one reviewer declared that 'flower pictures by James V Jelley always stand in a class apart', marvelling at his watercolour of blue delphinia.

Here, Jelley paints a towering hollyhock, its ruffled crown of soft pink blossoms sitting regally above the mass of green leaves bowing in deference. 

Jelley studied in his native Lincoln with William Logsdail and Frank Bramley under E R Taylor (who later founded the Ruskin Pottery). When Taylor became Headmaster at the Birmingham School of Art he took Jelley with him; 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).