Emilio Tafani studied painting in Florence and Livorno under Professor Micheli, and in 1903 was admitted to the Academy of Brera in Milan. By 1921, he and his family were living in Lewisham. As well as a painter in oils, he was a poster artist and chromo-lithographer with his own studios (ELT Studios). During the Second World War, in his 60s, he joined the Civil Defence in Lewisham as an Air Raid Warden and painted a number of powerful pictures of his fellow Wardens, some of which were exhibited at an exhibition at the Horniman Museum in March 1943. A few months later, the Lewisham Arts Society was formed and in November that year Tafani gave a lecture to the Society in which he attacked the many '-isms' in modern art.

Our picture was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1943, where it was noticed by The Lewisham Borough News (1943):

Mr E.L. Tafani, 70 Westwood Hill, Sydenham, has again been busy among the Civil Defence personnel, and in "At the Lecture", an oil, presents a party of five wardens listening intently to an unseen speaker.

The figure with the three stripes is a Head Warden. Civil Defence officers, mostly mature men and women, took their duties extremely seriously, for they were aware of the lives at stake when enforcing blackouts, sounding air raid sirens, issuing gas masks, ordering evacuations and rescues, and watching for fire.

At the RA in 1946, Tafani exhibited a picture called Questions After the Lecture, which may have been a companion to our picture.